Was the root of her humanity, integrated albeit pot-bound,
Till transplanted and heeled in, and out, of this life.
She imbues me with a sense of life so precious
That she lives, while the living are the walking dead -
Like the religious obsessive, beset by her incubus,
Or parents who use children as vehicles for hatred.¹
The virtue of the taproot at the core of personalities
Is its wholesome control of traffic from the extremities
With its priority command to Give Way Ahead.
As laterals probe the earth to extend the psyche,
The taproot holds the balance between growth and standstill:
A policeman on point duty isn’t perfect, but by crikey
Without him to prioritize, traffic jams beyond retrieval,
We’re overrun by heavy goods, bandwagons, sleepwalkers,
Our homes and streets rumble, we fear the night stalkers,
The goblins of primal sin that caused Mother’s upheaval.
The fanatical fuse blows sky-high the head;
But where the boot goes in or the land is ungrateful,
Will pride-leaching poverty keep the proportions fed,
Or will daughters be sold to a pimp for a plateful?
More blameworthy are the well-watered with lives out of proportion
To the law of human nature, who connive at abortion,
The murder of innocents by Hitler’s new faithful.
The human taproot should sensitize the rest
To the value of life, being stronger than side-roots
That know only consistency. Do we act for the best,
Harmonizing root needs, resolving their disputes,