Planting Words (a sestina about writing)
Money doesn’t grow on trees
They say.
But who are they anyway?
Because as a writer who writes
What I know
I’m sure that’s where my fortune grows.

It takes love and time to grow
A tree.
Plant a seed and wait, you say?
So who are you to show the way?
We’re writers
And we must write. That’s what we know.

But how did we come to know?
We grow
Up this way and like the trees
We find our strength in what we say
Our own way.
It’s what it means to be writers.

And we’ve always been writers,
We know.
Like a seedling knows to grow
Toward the sun to become a tree.
We can say
The same. We know no other way.

If there was another way
Writers
Are savvy enough to know
That like a wild fire grows
Through the trees
We must share what we have to say.

And we have so much to say.
This way
There’s no deadline for writers.
We may be starving but we know
Our faith grows
Beyond the forest through the trees

It’s the truth trees and writers know
For there’s no other way to say
We plant our words to watch them grow.