Audacity

~ I wrote this piece as an ode to the mulberry bush that is actually growing out of the seawall along East River on Roosevelt Island, along which I walk every day to and from work and pleasure. ~

The mulberry bush
thrusting out of the sea wall
at a precarious angle

What audacity
to make ripe mulberries
where you have no business being!

Who brought you here? Who planted you?
Who created the bare minimum earth
for you to put down your roots?

How dare you grow here with no signed deeds,
no ownership decrees to the land (can we even call it land?)
where you so impudently send down your roots?

What audacity!
To trust your right to life, your right to flourish
between slabs of dead concrete!

Audacity? Or prayer?
For when the half moon was casting silver magic over East River
and even the rocks on the banks were asleep

I heard you sing out your fervent prayer
for protection, for fruition
for your life itself.

You did not know to whom you prayed
and it didn’t matter,
for you know in your bones what we forget

That all is alive, that all is god
that all have the power to bestow the blessing of life
when we truly release our belief in self-sufficiency, and ask.