Princes and Kings call themselves
“orphans, widowers, beggars,”
to get themselves rooted in the dirt”
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way, Ursula K Le Guin, pg. 164
We were so dug in, we thought. Look how our shared experience intertwined us. How the gallows humor of high-pressure work helping the inner city’s neediest bound us together. Oh, we could laugh at the absurdities we faced! Oh, how we bellowed at the misbegotten antics of students, or each other!
But we never saw the eroded soil beneath us. We didn’t consider how shallow our foundation had become. We never realized how one ill-considered insult–or series of them–toward any one of us could overturn us all, and so quickly. We never knew how exposed we were to the fall.
Until the cutting blow came.
unrooted
how we work
among the ruins
for Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt: Rooted #writephoto
and Real Toads’ Such Were Syllables That Possessed May ~ (imagined by Sanaa Rizvi)
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Frank J. Tassone 
I enjoyed reading your poem. The great trees in the photo made me think of the many really large trees I have known….often they fell during a hurricane. “We never considered the foundation has grown shallow.”
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Thanks, Annell! 😀
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Superb, Frank… and sadly true.
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Thanks, Sue! 😀
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This is incredibly potent! ❤️ Thank you so much for writing to the challenge 😀
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My pleasure, Sanaa! 🙏 😀
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Gosh, that’s a powerful piece of writing. It touched me deeply.
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Thank you! 😀
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Thanks, Sue! 😀
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Thanks again, Sue! 😀
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