Reasons For Living, 7
What is done cannot be seen,
for the most part, or known either.
And what is done well is hardest
of all to see.
The work of a life
is like the work of the bluestem,
which sends up a few blades of grass
and a three-pronged florescence,
its tiny red and yellow blossoms looking
royally purple only from some distance,
its flowers and blades conspiring
to conceal the hundreds of miles
of vital roots in fertile darkness.
A prairie, it has been said,
is like a forest whose canopy
grows underground.
A life is like that
too. What it produces is buried
in the hearts of others and lies
hidden there, still alive, still working,
not in its own name, but in names
unknown, which may not call upon
or welcome or know their influence,
but which nevertheless do the work
implanted in them, and not in vain.
