Natural Learning

 I did not come into this life

as a force meant to remake the terrain.

I came the way moss does:

quiet, deliberate,

learning which surfaces

would not poison me.

My movement has always followed tropism..

the old instinct written into stems and spores,

the way a body leans

before the mind decides,

the way roots turn

toward what keeps them breathing

and away from rot.

People say I’ve changed,

as if change were betrayal

and not the natural response

of a field that learned

when to lie fallow.

They forget how long I stood exposed,

offering shade

until my leaves thinned to veins.

I was never built for melior by conquest.

I do not improve the land

by breaking it open.

Any betterment that follows me

arrives the way spring does

not because it was ordered,

but because the ground was finally spared.

If something softens nearby,

it happens like birds returning

after smoke clears

not summoned,

just sensing the air

no longer burns their lungs.

I do not repair broken things.

I remain with them

the way stones remain in rivers,

letting water pass,

letting time teach

what force never could.

My boundaries were once open plains,

crossed without pause,

grazed down to dust.

Now they grow wild:

thorned, humming, alive...

still shelter,

still beauty,

but no longer permission.

Growth follows me

the way green follows thaw,

not because I chased improvement,

but because I honored tropism

over performance,

breath over proof.

I am not here to drag the world forward

by its roots.

I am here the way trees are..

tilting, adapting,

listening to light

without ever claiming to own it.

And if the land remembers me differently now,

let it be said cleanly:

I did not force bloom.

I chose where life was possible,

and let melior happen

as a consequence...

not a command.