I want to share one of my poems with you. I’ve grown tired of letting them gather dust, waiting for some journal’s approval. They’ve endured enough rejection — perhaps the internet will prove a kinder soil.
Most of my poems circle around quiet desolation. This one is no different — except that a thread of hope winds through it. I was struck by how powerfully that hope might take shape in the image of a small plant forcing its way through the cracks of a roadside pavement.
If there is a poem that sums up my year — perhaps my life too — it is this one. This has not been an easy year, in terms of both personal circumstances and the wider global unease to which I am, if I’m honest, very sensitive. Often it has felt like an accomplishment simply to get through the day: to rise, to work, to do what must be done, and still be strong for those around me.
Here, friends, is the reality I wish to convey in the poem. Life is brutal — inescapably so — and we are not in control. We deceive ourselves when we believe that faithfulness to whatever god we serve will shield us from pain. Calvary, after all, is a place of death, not vindication. Life is hard. Yet life remains a precious gift, even in its harshest seasons. I will not surrender it lightly.
In the vastness of what seems a mostly barren universe, this small blue-green planet holds a treasure of indescribable beauty — a vibrant, dynamic seed of life. And we are part of that. Today we may be crushed, blown over. Tomorrow, the sun will shine. Life finds a way. So take heart, friends.
the seed
lodged in a fracture of forgotten stone—
a seed not sown, un(in)tended—
splits its
elf on instinct,
bleeds
into
the
grit,
the light—
toward
aches
then
to stand in green defiance —
a single stubborn syllable of becoming
that braves being battered by the wind
or ground beneath brutish boots
alive, reaching —
hungry for the sun,
faithful to its fragile covenant with dust
Vapors In The Wind 
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