Ode to a Radish

It's OK just to be OK.

Just to be You. 

Now remove the "just." 

When there's no "should"

there's no "just."

We're all empaths.

We're all light-workers from

another galaxy. 

Let go of the drama.

Be incomparable.

Your laceration is unique,

a vein of rubies

glistening in jagged stone.

It's OK to

bleed out your miracle

in ordinary time.

Register no grievance

in the Book of Trauma.

Fall down in tears

on the kitchen floor

with a broom in your fist

not knowing why, exactly,

you gaze into the abstract

expressionist linoleum.

Neither bliss

nor clinical depression

are required of you.

The space between grief

and bipolar ecstasy

is the frail and unmiraculous

pause between breaths.

This is the place where it's OK

not to be outraged,

not to feel abused,

not to tip-toe on the cutting edge.

We’re all radicals

which comes from the Latin

for root, as in "radish."

It's OK to be a radish,

no one's favorite vegetable,

rooted in the beaten loam

of your bittersweet heart,

just you, except there’s no “just.”

The inimitable singularity

of your glorious fingertip

delights the ancestors

and thrills the unborn

for seven generations past

and seventy to come!

Painting: by Jane Palmer