Whenever you see a tree

LOS CURSOS DE INGLES GRATIS PREFERIDOS POR LOS HISPANOHABLANTES

 

Padma Venkatraman was born in India but left on her own at the age of 19 to study at an international school in England. She immigrated by herself a year later to the United States. She obtained a doctorate at the College of William and Mary and then conducted post-doctoral research at Johns Hopkins’s Environmental Engineering department before switching careers and becoming an American citizen. She worked as an oceanographer and diversity director before writing Born Behind Bars (2021), The Bridge Home (2020) and A Time to Dance (2015).

Padma Venkatraman
 
 

Whenever you see a tree

Think

how many long years
this tree waited as a seed
for an animal or bird or wind or rain
to maybe carry it to maybe the right spot
where again it waited months for seasons to change
until time and temperature were fine enough to coax it
to swell and burst its hard shell so it could send slender roots
to clutch at grains of soil and let tender shoots reach toward the sun
Think how many decades or centuries it thickened and climbed and grew
taller and deeper never knowing if it would find enough water or light
or when conditions would be right so it could keep on spreading leaves
adding blossoms and dancing
Next time
you see
a tree
think
how
much
hope
it holds


Padma Venkatraman

  
 

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