Living Fruitful Lives

The red-winged blackbirds perch on the cattails
Last year's cattails that are going to seed
Their brown firmness gone
They are transformed into down
Leaving stalks with strange, bleached tufts and wisps of fluff on them.

Some of the cattail fluff
Is carried off to pad nests
And comfort the little lives
That hatch and fledge there
Or becomes bedding for fieldmice,
Muskrats, and chipmunks.

Some is eaten by bugs
Or it rots on the stalk
Or in the mud of the marsh
Enriching the soil

And some of the tiny seeds that it carried
Burst open and grow anew.

May God grant us richly fruitful lives, and may many benefit thereof.

And may we also appreciate how very humble a fruitful life can be.