by Luke Calvin
PROPAGATION
My soul waits;
submerged
in a mason jar
on God’s kitchen windowsill.
I am a remnant.
Cut away;
stripped of everything
that made me
lush and lovely.
Drowned.
Half-baptized
in the likeness of
The Vine Himself.
Who was plucked from the waters
into expedited exile;
forced to live on only words,
before he spread into this world.
Growth…
Excision...
Isolation…
Propagation…
The spiritual order of operations.
I face, now, my botanic test:
Will this mystic machinery
remember
how to root
before I rot?
Displaced and on display,
on this well-lit windowsill I wait
upon the elements,
water,
light,
and every word
that falls from the mouth of God,
as He lifts my jar
to sing over my bare,
and still barren,
body.
LUKE CALVIN
Luke Calvin (MA, MDiv, LPC) is a full-time therapist who writes about longing for home and the experience of being on the outside: outside our culture, outside our church, and even outside ourselves. He hopes to depict the ways in which Jesus meets us “outside the gates,” in our moments of disconnection and dislocation, to offer us a deeper sense of belonging. Luke is a husband, father, gardener, and music lover. It wasn’t until he joined a local writers’ group that he considered himself an author.