The lotus doesn’t
ask permission
to shoot its stem out of the mud.
It is simply time.
Time to loosen its grip,
to pass through the water
and emerge from the surface.
Time to yield to its purpose.
And so, it softens.
Unfurls.
Stretches
until it reaches its full expression.
Even then, as a beaming
chalice of light
and communion,
the lotus stays rooted in mud.
Because the mud,
the darkness,
is where its life began
and the wellspring of its luminosity.