31/07/2025
Longleaf pine seedlings spend their early years in a "grass stage," and they appear as clusters of long needles on the ground, as they develop an extensive root system underground before finally shooting upward into their taller form. For the longleaf pine, what looks like stillness from the outside is a deep kind of becoming.
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To The Longleaf Pine (in its early years), a poem:
There are parts of who you are
that you may believe
only exist in fragments:
a taproot growing straight down
clustered needles staying low, close to the ground...
as if they belong to different timelines.
And in each of those timelines,
no one told you how long emergence would take.
But as the years go on,
somehow, you still end up rising
from the forest floor,
even without yet knowing
how your new shape will hold.
Slowly but surely,
the sky stretches wide above you
and everything within you begins to see:
it is not too late to embrace
the possibility of who you could be.
Your ground-held green,
nearly-hidden bud,
and relentless root
all unfold in ways
that have mystified you
with timing
that feels too hard to trust
and too far out of your control.
But somehow,
through it all,
a full tree still forms,
and all of this
is a part of the whole.
You are still whole.
Getting to this point in your life
has taken so long that you might
not even recognize
who you have become so far, along the way,
but perhaps, that is okay,
for time did not erase meaning.
The years did not take away the depth.
All along, you were still becoming,
and the story is not finished yet.
Notice all that grows tall and strong around you.
Dare to be seen, beyond the fear.
For even at this stage, you belong here.
MHN
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Illustration by me Morgan Harper Nichols