Breathing slowly through this one,
in the wait and see of a thing budding.
Will we follow nature’s lead to bloom
or think too hard and prune the bud early?
I am Aspen, leaves fluttering with the slightest wind,
roots of many underground in actuality only one.
I am multitudes,
but no less rooted
than the Hedge Bush of you,
solid and thickly encroaching.
Should the Hedge Bush critique the Aspen for its quaking leaves
that are, in fact, its greatest beauty?
Or the Aspen complain that Hedge Bush is too solidly boundaried,
when that is its very purpose for being?
We are similar species, you and I.
But your ways are not all my ways.
and I can’t be molded into your imagined ideal
(like the last one who folded herself in your image);
I am already complete.
The sweetest fruit hangs sunkissed
on limbs far from trunk and root,
where safety is precarious at best
and the risk of plummeting is high.
I am already on the outer limb.
© Sabrina Santa Clara, 2012