Itself

“Everything in Nature grows and defends itself any way it can and is spontaneously itself, tries to be itself at all costs and against all opposition.”
 – Rainer Maria Rilke


Can you convince the burgeoning Oak
To grow into a Pine?
Can you tell the aged cactus
To rid itself of spines;

Or the stone instead of solidity 
To make its center light
And float as fledgling down
Off splintered, windswept heights?

Can you force obscurity
Into the waxing nail-clipped moon;
Dim the magic of midnight stars,
Or tell the sun to leave at noon?

Can you say to the roach, 
“Be beautiful, be lovely, 
Cuddle in with soft embrace?”
Or to the spindly spider, 
“Two are better than eight?”

Can you make the rushing brook,
Reverse its steady track,
Instead of flowing southerly,
To take a northward path?  

Can you persuade the grasses
Not to bend beneath the wind,
Or induce the ocean’s weight
To be crystal-still and thin?  

Can you tell the burgeoning child,
Her heart leads her astray;
The affinities her life reveals,
Are treacherous mistakes?

Can you force her swelling soul
To morph and then concave;
Press and stretch her tender will
Into your palpable shapes?

Although you bind this sapling
And cover it with shade,
And whisper in its dreaming ear
A list of conifer traits,

Its branches yet will sprout green orbs,
A host of rippling lobes;
Its wounds will bleed deciduous blood,
The alchemy of Oaks.