Let me dig around it and put manure on it.
—Luke 13.8
Life-Giver, you pronounce your judgment:
“Surely there is in you (I see it)
a fruit (it is your nature), a gift (I put it there).”
You call me to penitence:
“Here, let me give you more life.
Receive it.”
And this is my repentance: compost.
What was life, then death, turned to life.
Shovelfuls of fasting dug around me,
the hard blade, the removal.
The manure of the failed,
submission to being beneath the lowest.
Accepting offal as a gift of grace.
This is my repentance: I receive.
Deeply rooted, deeply fed,
my soul is satisfied as with a rich feast.
Bread which satisfies.
And then, little buds.
New birds in the branches.
—March 22, 2019