have you ever smelled lemongrass
plucked fresh from the soil?
rolled it between your fingers
so its scent lingers past present?
have grief ever broken you open?
made of your heart a scene of ruins
so that survival is the only prayer you can utter
and even that prayer feels empty?
have you ever needed company
– you, so desperately, despairingly alone –
and then come across a tree
who offers to hold you while you weep?
have you ever known kinship, or encountered Spirit?
have you ever encountered God as ginger root, or grief?
have you opened to life’s sacredness, far beyond language,
so wildly full of both struggle, and ease?
anna blaedel