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What the Ground Knows
inspired by al-Mutanabbi

Before the fire, the stone remembers heat.
Before the sword, the ore remembers blows.
I have lived where every living thing
draws one more breath before it speaks.

The field wakes without argument.
Snow leaves no law behind.
What winter buried in its weight,
spring answers without pride.

There is a flower taller than the rest,
gold enough to quiet the field.
It asks no leave to wear its face,
nor waits for praise to make it true.

I have watched it meet the autumn wind
and bend no farther than it must.
Its root had settled long before
a single eye believed its shape.

At dawn the fox crosses the field
as though the earth remembers every step.
It spends no thought on being seen.
Morning is enough.

No courage drives it.
Courage belongs to those who bargain with fear.
The fox carries neither bargain nor burden.
It lives with the ease of water finding its course.

I have envied that more than triumph:
a life that never asks permission
to become itself.

The unfinished capable are all I fear.

Not those who failed.
Failure leaves its mark in open ground.

I fear the hand
that learned its strength,
then folded into comfort.

The voice
that reached the edge of speech
and chose another silence.

The blade
left bright beneath its cloth
until the metal forgot its edge.

A man is rarely broken by a blow.
More often,
he is worn smooth
by choosing less
than he already knew he could become.

I take the hour as it arrives,
bitter or sweet.
The stone does not choose
the weight laid on it.

I return each day
to what refuses my hands.
The work resists.
That is how the hands are taught.

The seed keeps its counsel.

Winter counts it among the dead.
The earth says nothing in reply.

Beneath the frost,
the root remembers.
No witness is required.

When spring breaks open,
people praise the flower.

The ground kept the labor.

I do not ask to be remembered.
The hour for names has not arrived.

The field remembers every season.
None arrived to applause.

I owe my work
more than I owe my witness.

The fire did not begin today.
The ore has carried the hammer's promise
since the mountain closed around it.

Ask the stone.

Ask the buried seed.

Ask the field.

They answer
without a voice.

What is true
does not wait
to be seen.