Vox Meditantis

My grandmother told me to plant failures like seeds.
Bury them, she said, three inches deep,
water them with what you’ve learnt,
then walk away.

I thought her mad – eighty-three and talking
to the roses whilst I nursed my third redundancy letter,
my degree gathering dust like the piano
I’d promised myself I’d master.

But there I was at midnight in the garden,
digging holes by torchlight, whispering apologies
to the earth: Sorry for the job I botched,
the love I fumbled, the words I should have said.

I buried them all – rejection letters, failed projects,
that text I never should have sent –
patted down the soil with my palms
and felt something shift beneath my ribs.

Spring came.

Nothing grew where I’d planted my sorrows,
but I found I could finally breathe around them.
The empty spaces weren’t monuments –
they were clearings, waiting.

Now when I fail (and I do, still do),
I think of grandmother’s roses, how she pruned them
ruthlessly each winter, how the cutting back
was never cruelty but invitation.

How sometimes the strangest wisdom
is knowing when to let the ground stay empty,
trusting that fallow soil
is its own kind of harvest.

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.