‘Just Doin’ Our Job’: A Sonnet in Terza Rima by T.M. Moore

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Just Doin’ Our Job

As if they didn’t have enough to do
already—harvesting the light to make
food for the tree and seeing to it you

and I have clean air every day—leaves slake
their host tree’s constant thirst by managing
the process whereby unseen roots will take

the water from the soil and, like a spring
of life, disperse it upwards and throughout
the tree, defying gravity—a thing

not easily achieved. But give a shout
out to the leaves, which use osmosis to
accomplish this and keep the tree from drought.

“It’s nothing,” we leaves say. “We’re glad to do
the work each day that we’re appointed to.”

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T. M. Moore is Principal of The Fellowship of Ailbe, a spiritual fellowship in the Celtic Christian tradition. He and his wife and editor, Susie, make their home in the Champlain Valley of Vermont.