First, imagine yourself unborn,
Leaves and petals back in seed,
Small white heads of your root
Curiously tucked in. You know
Less than nothing about what to be
Or become, in just a little time.
Blodeuwedd behind the veil of time
Hovers in limbo, mere soul, myth-borne,
Weightless, wanderlusting seed
Of bloodroot, alumroot, roseroot,
Whatnot, all possible. Do you know
What your ideal world is to be?
Your question is not to be or not to be
But to dream of a place and a time
In which it will be safe to be born
From out of any random kind of seed
In whatever niche to put down root
In Creation’s most intimate know
Of future happiness. Without knowing
What flower you are, what will be
A good Earth? Spring, fall, which time
Would you like yourself to be born
In? Would you be a wind-sown seed
Or pushed from bird-gut to take root?
Remember, you are anything. A root
May even be no part of you. Who knows
Whether it’s really necessary to be
Moveless? No. You move across time
Inching toward being finally born
Into actuality, no more a mere seed.
Was it all set when a flower set seed
If it would sprout to be unloved, uprooted,
Or a precious beauty everyone knows
They should and do adore? To be
In as much fear as hope, biding your time.
Blind, unbigoted, bespoke to be born.
In time will it unfurl, all that’s in a seed
Hidden. You will be born, grow to know
About being. The veil pierced by roots.
Lucie Chou
Lucie Chou is an ecopoet residing in mainland China. Her poetry explores the conjunction between the multispecies worldings of nature and spirituality, philosophy and Romantic aesthetics. Her work has appeared in the Entropy magazine,the Black Earth Institute Blog and the Tiny Seed Journal. With her debut eco-poetry collection, Convivial Communiverse, forthcoming from Atmosphere Press in March 2023, she continues to hike, garden, draft poems en plein air, and read poems to her companion flora.
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