Growing up
By: Joy Ortiz
I was an acorn
Shaken and fallen,
Buried and alone,
Cold in the darkness
Underground.
My shell was hard.
At my heart
Lay a bitter kernel,
Small and green,
Shielded and rough-capped,
Yet alive.
I remembered the sun;
The rustle of my parent's leaves;
The songs of birds;
The view from high boughs
Before I fell.
As I lay in the dark,
Entombed by earth,
I wept for the loss
Of light and life.
Was there anything left for me
Besides death?
Yet something unseen
Hovered above my cold bed.
The world I had left
Was over me still
Beyond the dirt.
How long did I lie
In the unchanging ground
Shivering in fear and doubt?
All the world was silent.
But time passed; the season changed.
The soil around me grew warm,
And at last I knew
The sun still shone somewhere.
When the earth became damp
And water bathed me,
I remembered April storms
And the beauty of falling rain.
When neighbor roots
Pushed down around me,
I recalled the verdant grass
Spreading beneath my parents' tree.
They reminded me
That black earth is no tomb
But life for many
Who draw their strength
From deep roots.
Something stirred above me,
Curious and penetrating.
It was a red ant
Tunneling downward.
He made his bed in the depths,
Safe from hungry foes,
And daily trekked from soil to sun
And back again.
His presence told me
Dark solitude is not death
But safety and refuge
For those who make perilous journeys
And need a place to rest.
Hope rose in my acorn heart.
Through a shell softened by rain, soil, and time,
I reached,
Sending the palest shoot upward,
And downward,
A tiny root.
Through the warm earth I climbed
Upward and downward
Past the ants and neighbor roots,
Toward life above and below.
No longer a resident of one world
But two,
I emerged again into the sun,
Transfigured from acorn to oak.
Slow-growing yet sure,
I reach toward heaven.
Rooted in the death that remade me,
I am growing up.
