tending

the soil can be a place where both weeds and fruits grow.
both thorns and flowers can exist in the same space.
the soil may support both,
weeds may be here, but i’m not a weed garden.

with tending, the proper shoots will survive,
with nourishing, they will thrive.
what’s permitted will persist,
what’s fed will flourish.

weeds come up quicker than fruit,
but are far more shallow.
skilled hands recognize and uproot,
sooner and more often,
get’s easier every time.

as better roots tap deep,
and healthier sprouts spring up,
the products of the labor will become more evident.
the trees will begin to overshadow the weeds,
the branches far higher and wider
than any weed threatened to reach.

until the same tending hands once toiling,
will take to pruning.
and the branches once pruned,
will eventually carry fruit.
the same hands once dirtied digging weeds,
now occupied harvesting fruit.

uprooting the weeds,
dropping the fig leaves,
receiving the fruit,
fruit of the forming process.

now harvest comes and it goes,
until we brave to plant again.
planting seeds from fruit once tasted,
seeds carrying stories,
seeds packed with a promise.

now tended with hands that have been dirtied here before.
hands that have tended the gap,
opened to the already and not yet.
now the roots are ever deeper,
and branches far higher and wider,
until the fruit is no longer something plucked, only caught.