Radical is a darling word
Listen to it’s musicality
A charming ditty
Perhaps I’m smitten
With the word
I see a small red radish
Growing rich with nutrients
Expanding its midline
Breaking up hard dirt
Its growing there
Its littleness drills down
Towards something deep
I adore sweet and spicy roots
The word radical
It’s root radix
Means to be rooted
When I hear this word
I see the act of disruption
Tapping into something rich
An underground life source
We need radical people
To disturb dry and dead ground
They are our regenerators
Spicy people
This is a poem I wrote in a 6 minute prompt in my Tailspinning writers group last month. These past weeks I’ve spent most of my hours writing an extensive proposal to key stakeholders in a place. The proposal calls to build and provide safe and supportive transitional housing for young adults; an overlooked and under resourced demographic who are the future of a place. Youth who need shelter so they may grow roots, and aerate hard soil and grow as healthy perennials. It’s a different form of writing but in its own way it’s data driven testimony for the call of (and from) the radish.
When you hear the phrase “That’s rad” may you too think of the twirling red radish doing something powerful!
when I connected the dots regarding the word radical ( which of course in Italian ( Latin) makes the connection more apparent , it enlightened me to the true definition of radical thinking ! So it’s developed mistakenly to meaning out of the box or subversive thinking… It’s really root thinking. What a good place from which to depart , root thinking 👌🏽❤️