Roots: While Blooms the Lotus

Roots: While Blooms the Lotus

The roots proof
her footing
in the mud

at the bottom
of the chum-sludge
pond, her wires

an atomic line
stem fast and quick
blast of lifespan below
the delicate stairs

of spread petals and ban-
isters of fanned 

lily pads.  It’s the spot 
on her broad waist
of water

where the sky turns

cloud-shy, where the crowd
of flowers separate

being edge close 
for infrequent loons,
a goose or two, or

a frustrated mallard who,
if it were land

and she were a heifer, would

stand still enough and let

slip the velvet petal, in,
through, and along

her tongue and not chew
only lay it back

on the surface of
the pond, or maybe
it’s like a window

shopper soliciting with
her eyes and seeing the one

thing she can’t do without
 for display only

and walking away with it
in the ribbon

of her suasion and happy
enough to string

it  there weightless as it is,
and still

fragile, still tethered still
fresh still

giving and holding on
and true to the muck

and grime and slime

while all the rest glide over

to let her reckon with
knot knowing and too,

not knowing but still, mission:
to know.