by Taylor Blayse Rockley
WHERE THE WEEPING WILLOW SLEEPS
My soul runs barefoot
along the roots
of the weeping willow,
which is now a sleeping stump
(though it once grew tall)
in the front yard of childhood.
And my mind, now,
can still see its branches
waving viny fingers,
beckoning, inviting.
I lie down
beside the remnants
of its old trunk,
now cut.
I press my ear to the soil
and swear I can still hear
its roots pulsing,
rushing like a river
toward living water.
But I run off
and tell my father
I am afraid
of a poet’s heart.
Of being split in two,
like decaying bark
by every tiny miracle.
My mother clasps my hand,
leads me back
where the willow sleeps.
She points up to the sky,
tells me the tree was never afraid
of its vastness,
nor all the life its limbs touched.
For it knew the real worth
was toiling beneath
the dirt,
groaning and growing
and upholding its body.
And when it came down that stormy day,
it did so in song—
roots still singing,
still thick and stretching and breathing.
Maybe I am afraid of my own fragility.
Yet I remember
a weeping willow’s roots
live up to three more seasons
even after the tree has died.
And I wonder how much more
time and memory,
the very root of our souls
will carry,
even after the limbs of our bodies
have broken away.
BRADFORD PEAR
I found a poem buried
in the thorny shoots
of the Bradford pear,
early autumn.
I dug my hands
into the dirt—
mostly clay—
reaching for it,
yet came up
with bloody fingertips,
pricked by the invasive
viny things.
Sometimes it hurts,
you know?
Getting at the root of things.
But I heard
the Maker of Light
is always invading
these tight, tangled,
dark
places.
TAYLOR BLAYSE ROCKLEY
Taylor Blayse Rockley is a writer and author living in the Midwest. She holds a B.A. in both English and music from the University of Missouri. She works as a greenhouse manager for her family’s gardening business, The Garden Party. Her work is often rooted in the natural world and has been published in literary journals and magazines, such as Calla Press Publishing, Prosetrics: The Literary Magazine, and The Way Back to Ourselves. Her debut poetry collection, The Garden Daughter, won the Christlit Book Award in 2026.