Beet

By Michelle Webster-Hein

I sliced a beet in half and discovered that it has rings. Rings like you would find on a tree stump to mark its age--one ring, one year.

But beets are young, have only known one spring, one summer, one early fall, perhaps also one winter passed inside in a dark, dry box. So what could each ring represent? Each season? Each snap of cold? Each grub that has burrowed blindly around its girth in the cool black soil?

It makes me much less serious to think about how much happens, silently, under my feet.