What Roots Teach the Waiting

They do not rush downward through the dark, these intricate fingers spreading blind— but taste the grain of soil, the million conversations of stone, the whispered permission of water trickling through.

They learn the patience of seasons, how to grow without witness, how to hold a thing together with nothing but the gentleness of pulling in opposite directions.

In the press of earth they find no judgment, only the slow mathematics of becoming— each new chamber a small affirmation, each tendril a question answered by the simple, ordinary ground.

And when the tree above them breaks into light, into leaf, into song, the roots remain in their dark ministry, asking nothing, knowing everything: that what holds deepest is what grows unseen.