by Sarah Steele
WHAT’S BELOW THE SURFACE
I.
My fruit shines, and I
swell with pride,
flutter my leaves so the wind
will fly my
music down the path.
Passersby stop to admire
juicy droplets of delicious dew.
And it’s all mine.
My fruit,
my flowers,
my foliage.
All visible above the
surface of the earth packed
firm around my trunk.
I have grown from a seedling, and
look at me now.
I am grand.
II.
Storm clouds approach
with darkness of night.
I draw leaves in,
cling to precious fruits tight,
await the impending assault.
First raindrops, I endure with ease,
straighten my trunk with the growing breeze,
stand a little stronger,
staking claim to this place that has my name.
But the wind persists.
Pressure grows, gust turns to gale,
and I flinch as my bark is pounded by hail
that attacks with a vengeance, pulling,
wrenching, wresting me from my place.
A limb now breaks
from up above,
decadent greenery falling with it,
there one,
here another, piercing the land as if to kill it.
Fruits plunge to their demise,
extravagant nutrients soaking soil by surprise,
and I quake at the tumult
that threatens to uproot me entirely.
III.
The ceaseless storm eventually ceases,
and I heave as layers of bark and branch
continue to crack and fall,
each thud an abrasion to the earth, an invasion
to the land that has only ever
fed me and given me space to expand.
A shell of a tree, I cleave to my place, then
startle with revelation:
And yet, I stand.
Nothing to show above the surface minus
a thick trunk and a few scraggly remaining boughs,
and yet, somehow I remain—
rooted, I stay.
I finally peer below the surface,
deep underground,
to a network of service—intertwining roots of
powerful attributes that
have made it impossible for me to fall.
I see
a grandmother’s delight in the ordinary,
a grandfather’s refusal to betray,
a grandmother’s poetic weaving of words,
a grandfather’s investment in his small world,
a mother’s ever-continuous work, and
a father’s extravagant generosity.
Some of these traits have become mine;
some of these simply hold me upright.
I am wounded and shaken,
empty and broken, and
I wonder if I will ever be me again.
But their roots press ever onward and downward,
all the while spreading inward sustenance up my core.
I breathe fresh air,
offer my eternal hum to the forest, and
wait through this fallow season.
IV.
Look—there’s a bud.
SARAH STEELE
Sarah Steele is a poet, songwriter, and performer, writing and sharing work rooted in place, presence, and ordinary faithfulness. She also loves to talk about boundaries and people-pleasing through her poetry memoir, An Ocean Without. Sarah serves as senior editor and senior consultant for The Way Back to Ourselves and delights in digging into the inner workings of your words. Sarah lives in Michigan with her husband and their four redheads, where much of her day is shaped by rhythms of family and local life—and when the dishwasher was last run. You can find her writing on Substack at The Village Poet and her music on YouTube.