A Plant is Not an Individual - 09-01-12

One small church in North Portland

had an unfinished mural

in a basement that hasn't been used in six years,

and a Sunday School teacher

who wrote a lesson each week

for a class of only herself.

But we thought to fix it

because a plant is not an individual -

one blade of grass

connects to its kin -

as you can see by

hacking ivy to the ground

only to watch it refulrish,

the raspberry vines

clawing up from the dirt

only a few days later,

the rose rooted deep

in the cement.

Something more lurks

beyond berries,

beyond leaves,

beyond vines,

beyond what what we think of as a plant.

But a plant is not an individual;

it would not refer to itself as I,

but as we;

it will not whither when bits die,

does not bleed when leaves fall.

Yet even when

the hoe overturns the earth

and the ivy have been tugged

and the raspberry vines have been cut

and one persistent root has been extracted

from a its encasing of a chunk of cement,

all I find are hidden garlic clovers,

growing wild under the ivy.