In the mist rises something like a tree,
arms outstretched, as a yoke,
in its branches fruit, and blood,
planted by a stream all of life drinks from.
It’s missing an apple.
A lynching tree, maybe,
in midday sun,
where the birds of the air
make nests in its branches,
whose leaves are for
the healing of the nations.
A fruitless tree not cut down,
but dug around with manure.
Something like a serpent in it, lifted up,
a tree of good and evil,
a child climbing there,
the root of Jesse,
a woman beneath it, weeping.
Something like a vine
of which we are branches,
embracing everything,
the root and seed and leaf,
the cutting down of the tree
and the new tree all one thing,
a tree coming up in spring
out of a seed that has died,
out of stone, out of a grave,
blossoming in the dead of winter,
in the dead of all of us,
holding up the sky as night falls
and falls and falls.
Something like a tree,
on which is hung our salvation.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
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