"Let me tell you a simple little story" - just written - a little story about faith

Triacastela, Galicia, Spain
3 March 2018

Let me tell you
a simple little story—
though crammed

with centuries of plot
and an eternity of doubt—
about faith

and how it can
cause roots to spring
from a replanted dead tree

or life to issue forth
from long-dead tissue
but this story is not a story

about that kind of faith
because that kind of faith
challenges those laws

of biology and our reductive
understanding of the way
life really happens

and we are chained  so fast
to those stones that it takes
a mind-clearing hurricane

to bring it into being
but I’m only talking
about leaves growing

on living trees
about the tapping
from the inside of a shell

with a solid beak
about the simplicity
of breathing out and in

and if you were listening
you may have heard me
tell you a simple little story

and if you were not listening
you may not have heard me
tell you a simple little story—

it really makes no difference at all
either way because it’s always
your own story—not mine


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