Several years ago I bought a desk at a church rummage sale, a desk destined to be my front-porch desk. It was something I always wanted to have, a space designated as sacred and set aside for writing.

I sat there today, writing practice causing my pen to float across the page, merrily weaving a-ha’s into my consciousness, but there was something more calling to me.

It is glaringly obvious. Before I came outside to my writing desk, a rose-shaped pinecone and an acorn asked to join me at my desk. Who am I to deny pinecones and acorns?

So, out they went, and there they sat, just to the left of my notepad as I waxed rhapsodic about paradox and wishes and hopes and growth.

My eyes landed on my friends, the acorn and pinecone, which usually lived on my entry-way altar.

I picked up the pinecone and wrote:

“I am not sure where I picked up my rose-shaped pinecone, but it is so very beautiful. Its skin is fragile, paper-like.”

My pen paused, hanging in the air, waiting for more.

“Aged-newspaper-like, actually. Its edge reminds me of a dried up reed, left unplayed, in a clarinet. Two pieces, two petals, fall away like questions left unlived.  Like a glass of water only half consumed, like wind chimes, perpetually still and soundless.”

I gently placed the rose-shaped-pinecone and its petals back on the weathered desk and picked up the acorn.

“Valley oak acron, so long and thin compared to the squat acorns of my youth. There is life inside you, life that can only be tapped with the right soil, the right moisture, the right pressure and heat.”

I brought the acorn to my lips and my pen continued moving.

“And you know what else, Valley oak acorn? You are a treasure exactly as you are. You are complete in your current incarnation. You are not a massive tree, you are simply an elegant acorn. A precise, lovely acorn.

“A seed.”

I took a deep breath and put the acorn back on the desk beside the rose-shaped-pinecone.

I put my pen back on my desk, intensely satisfied in the sweet simplicity of the moment.