You have permission
right now
to leave behind your paper life,
your paper and cardboard life,
your brittle or sodden life
with its sad messes
of glue and peeling paint

You have permission to embrace
that thumping and insistent life
that shakes the old foundations
and breaks through

You never were beholden
to the protocol
of all those stiff facades.
Your roots cleave to the earth’s core
and your branches —
your branches clasp the sky.

©Wendy Mulhern
February 8. 2016