Branches

Those barren branches died five years ago;
as stark as ink they stand against the sky,
the record of unprecedented snow,
memorial for the eyes of of passers-by.

But year by year each new and nearby branch
has grown and greened and reached for still more light,
their leaves enough to catch the wind and dance
while yet the dead in rigor stand upright.

I look out, mornings, on the growing trees;
I know what has been written on the days
and have no need to read.  I knew that freeze,
and still remember what the leaves erase.

But there will come a day when someone else
looks out this window at the neighbor’s tree
and cannot see the hieroglyph that spells
the forces weaving through all they can see.

All unsuspecting they will laugh at frost
here in a place that gets so little snow,
and never thinking of what could be lost
they’ll go in ignorance—until they know.

But I won’t know.  I’ll be dissolved in ink
and written on the sky for all to see,
and I will stand unmoved by any wind
until the new, green growth has covered me.

Gladiolus

The drought is over and the rains
have come again, though summer still
is winding up the anchor chains.
Her empty sails begin to fill,

and in the garden one red thumb
has crowned the gladiolus’ tip:
a promise of the blaze to come.
A note of home waits on our lip

to swell full-throated into song—
not yet, but when the measure’s full—
and comfort. We have waited long.
The clanking chain will cease its pull

and let our homesick hearts go free
in music for a different day.
We shall return from months at sea
and let the summer sail away.

Image credit: Looking up into the branch structure of a Pinus sylvestris tree By Teslaton – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4182221

Take again the spindle and the distaff;
twist and turn the flax to linen thread
though you know it tangles into mischance,
though you know you labor for the dead.
Still you know each sepulchre’s a tomb:
Every shroud bedecks a birthing room.

It was you who wove the seamless garment
stripped away from him at Calvary,
spun the flesh to clothe the Word Incarnate
once you’d said, “Let it be done to me.”
Christ in glory seated on his throne
takes again the mantle you had sewn.

Though he tore it in his great endeavor—
fraying, threadbare, naked to the heart—
ripped the veil that parted us from heaven
as his flesh and bone were pulled apart.
Could he have restored the grievous tears?
Yes, but still the wounded cloth he wears.

Take then, Mother, take again your spindle;
take this mortal labor in your hands.
Spin and weave and stitch that selfsame linen
as you made your firstborn’s swaddling bands,
wrapping in your love his human need.
Weave that love again for all who bleed.

We go hence into the dark unknowing,
tattered as a dishrag with our wear.
Let us see your worklamp’s steady glowing
as you weave our hopes into your prayer:
We have tried to do as he had said.
May your son breathe life into the dead.

Did he learn from you this patient stitching?
He who wove creation with a word
slowly now is mending it and knitting
all things back together, beast and bird,
sea and land, and heaven unto earth,
as you weave bright clothes for our rebirth.

So our bodies, too, shall be rewoven
of the threads unraveled from his side,
filaments of gold, in flame pure-proven
as the king of love arrays his bride.
Mother, pray for us to Christ your son:
as it was for you, his will be done.

Eve spinning, the spindle in her right hand: Hunterian Psalter, ca 1170 (Glasgow University Library) By Anonymous – http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/psalter/psalterindex.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2549773

Rather, when you are invited,
go and take the lowest place
so that when the host comes to you he may say,
‘My friend, move up to a higher position.’
Then you will enjoy the esteem of your companions at the table.
For every one who exalts himself will be humbled,
but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
—Luke 14:7-14

O Lord, I am not worthy
to take a higher seat,
but hungry still and thirsty,
I’ll sit here at your feet.
I’ll take the scraps of mercy
if I can come and eat.

You call the meek and humble
to sit there at your side—
though neither, may I come there
to see you take your bride?
Give me, O Christ, your comfort
and take away my pride!

For you have set a table
in sight of all your foes,
and I have been the greatest,
the paragon of those.
Yet leave me not forsaken:
Forgive and draw me close.

I come, Lord, though I falter—
Stoop down and hear my plea:
Though I would be exalted,
its better still to be
a beggar at this altar
if you will humble me.

More details

Pieter Bruegel the Elder – Peasant Wedding – Google Art Project 2- Google Art Project: Home – pic Maximum resolution., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20361036

I heard the music end, the clapping start:
This is the way to win a tyrant’s heart,
by pleasing him and flattering his pride,
making him think you’re always on his side.
But watch out for him—he has always known
the only side to be on is your own.

So in your triumph strike while the iron’s hot:
Take up the sword and cut the Gordian knot
holding you back from all that you desire.
You have a king’s ear; what can you acquire?
You—or the one who moves you as a pawn.
Soon as you speak, he knows whose side you’re on.

There is a world now at your fingertips;
consider well the answer on your lips.
Let Herod go his way. You can go yours:
Ask him for gold to open this world’s doors.
Ask him for half his kingdom and go free.
Or try to play his game and ask for me.

This is not yours—it is your mother’s prize.
Why cage yourself if what you want’s the skies?
Think well, child: Will you ask for gold or lands?
You cannot have me.  I’m not in your hands.
I am beside you in the hand of God
and following the road I long have trod.

But I am in your power, even so.
The moment comes.  Choose, then, where you will go.
There is a freedom in the desert way
unmatched by any game kingmakers play.
You look at me and only see decrease,
but, daughter, it has given only peace.

And when they bring it in, the bloody gift—
think of it—will you choke down bile and lift
the freighted platter, balance pooling gore,
and thank him for your mother’s settled score?
He knows it, child. He knew it when you said,
“Here, on a platter, John the Baptist’s head.”

Salome by Titian, c. 1515 (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome) – Web Gallery of Art:   Oil on canvas, 90 x 72 cm (35.4 x 28.3 in). Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10759286

Teach me to pray, O Lord, for I am dumb:
I kneel, and not a word comes to my lips.
Hallow your name, and may your kingdom come.
Give us this day—I’ll be content with this.

How can I ask what I cannot deserve?
What do I have that is not from your hand?
Would I like more? But I don’t have the nerve
to ask. Yours is the power, world without end.

And I would ask you, Let your might be shown,
except I fear the justice that I’ll get.
How can I ask for mercy when I know
I’ve given none? And yet, O God, and yet—

If, in your grace, there could some mercy be
for one who loves the tang of righteous wrath,
if in your wisdom you could find in me
something that you would save, this would I ask:

that you’d forgive—Lord, let your will be done—
when I have no forgiveness to lend out,
that here on earth your kingdom may yet come,
and that within it I’d someday be found. Amen.

The Lord’s Prayer (1886-1896) from the series The Life of Christ, Brooklyn Museum – https://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/12/18/arts/20091218-tissot_3.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8790514

This life’s a sea.  A man must build his craft
as best he can to run across the waves;
must caulk the seams and seal it fore and aft,
and know it’s something else again that saves;
must know himself as truly as his draft,
and know he rides upon men’s open graves.

I thought I knew my task upon the seas,
that there was peace of mind in simple rules.
Cast off the lines: We work here as we please;
the good fish fill our nets in shoals and schools.
I laughed at storms who’d barely felt the breeze,
and did not know that all young men are fools

until I left my nets, just for a time—
except when he decided to set sail—
to walk the dusty roads and sometimes climb
the heights that made sea-level life seem pale.
He tacked, though, from the dregs to the sublime:
He had a job to do and would not fail.

And I knew what that meant: work to be done.
Give me my task and let me try my hand—
but there was nothing gained and nothing won
by any count I knew of, sea or land.
Yet there were things—“This is my well loved son”—
that moved me, though I could not understand.

It was enough: I could not leave his side,
though nine words out of ten were mysteries,
but swore to follow him on any tide.
I never could have reckoned on the seas
he took us on, that shook us ‘til we cried,
or all the times they’d bring me to my knees.

And still I tried to stand, or even walk,
no matter how the seas around us raged.
I stepped out one time as the stormwinds rocked
our boat—a war the waves and weather waged—
for he was there.  I went, but then I balked,
awash in fears that would not be assuaged.

But it was then I knew him, it was then,
as he stood steady on the heaving swell,
I finally understood what he had meant,
that faith could move a mountain.  I could tell
he would not let me drown.  I’d failed, but then
I called the mountain and the mountain fell.

So bending down, he took and lifted me,
as if my doubt and failure were no sin,
or as if such things could forgiven be.
We reached the waiting boat and we climbed in.
And I don’t bother, now, to walk the sea;
I fail, he lifts me up, and I begin.

Saint Peter sinking on water by Eero Järnefelt (1892) Altar piece of Taulumäki Church in Jyväskylä, Finland – Photograph by Antti Leppänen, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27315372

He answered them,
“Strive to enter through the narrow gate,
for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter
but will not be strong enough.
After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door,
then will you stand outside knocking and saying,
‘Lord, open the door for us.’
He will say to you in reply,
‘I do not know where you are from.
And you will say,
‘We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.’
Then he will say to you,
‘I do not know where you are from.
Depart from me, all you evildoers!’
And there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”
—Luke 13:22-30

We ate and drank beside you, Lord;
we sat and listened at your feet.
O Mercy, was there something more?
We followed as you walked our streets:
Will you not open up the door
and welcome us to sit and eat?

We long have sought the narrow gate,
and with its ancient locks we vie.
We labor as we watch and wait,
but cannot pass the needle’s eye.
But see, O Lord, the hour is late!
Let not your mercy pass us by!

For all we know has been reversed—
it’s worthless on the narrow way
where blest is hunger, blest is thirst,
and all our riches hold no sway.
The first are last, the last are first,
and night is now as bright as day.

We cannot do it.  Lord, draw near
and make us new, each breadth and length.
Come give us hope and quell our fear
and labor where we lack the strength.
For you alone can pass through here:
Come open wide the narrow gate.

Gate and wicket (manway) of Alsfeld‘s New Town Hall By Mylius – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6106745

O Mother, you have magnified the Lord:
In you he shows his workings to the world.
All generations—even ours—will praise
the ordinariness of all your days.

For he has shown the power of his arm
not in the sword and trumpet’s bright alarm,
but in your lifting him up to your breast
you show the might of God in tenderness.

And when he fills the hungry with good things,
it’s not as lord of lords and king of kings,
but in your nursing of his infant thirst.
You fill him as his mercy fills you first.

You show us, in your motherhood, his grace,
as he in helplessness has shown his face.
You bless him as he us—not lord to thrall,
for truly he is mother of us all.

Then as he promised mercy evermore,
be mercy for us, mother of the Lord.
We are because he holds us in his thought;
enfold us in your arms as you did God.

More details

Mary as the Queen of Heaven in Dante‘s Divine Comedy. Illustration by Gustave Doré. – Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri – published by L. Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1868, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1633234

Jephthah made a vow to the LORD.
“If you deliver the Ammonites into my power,” he said,
“whoever comes out of the doors of my house
to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites
shall belong to the LORD.
I shall offer him up as a burnt offering.”
—Judges 11:29-39a

Better to have faltered, Jephthah;
better to have failed.
Better to have fallen, bested,
on the battlefield.
Better to have broke your promise;
better have betrayed.
Better would be broken honor
than this keeping faith.

Who are you to vow such slaughter?
Better to have held your breath
for the blessing of your daughter.
God disposes life and death.
God, who makes the nations, breaks them;
you, the mattock in his hand,
ready earth for seeds.  He wakes them,
bringing bounty from the land.

Better to have backslid, Jephthah—
God is mercy, ‘bove all else.
Better to have seen your error,
risking judgment on yourself,
crying out, “Forgive me, Father,
that I do not take the knife.”
God had given you your daughter;
better to have spared her life.

Pietro della Vecchia -Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter – https://collection1.libraries.psu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/palmer/id/6378, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=66814851

I can’t say that I’d do it all again.
I’ll not deny that summer’s fruits are sweet,
but summer doesn’t stay, and then—what then?
The price I paid for these is steep, is steep.

I am not she that planted first those seeds
(though she is still me, if you catch my drift):
I am the she that choked and drowned in weeds;
that she is here today is all pure gift.

That any of those seeds took root and grew
up strong and whole—in spite of my own pain—
and now they stand, laden with summer’s fruit:
This is a mercy I cannot contain.

But knowing what I know now, to go back
and open-eyed decide to take the thorns—
Forgive a coward, Lord—the world would lack
this harvest.  I could not bear to be torn

again, to feel the harrowblade again.
And so I thank you for these summer days,
these summer lads so fast becoming men,
and that I go not back to springtime’s ways.

I thank you, God: These fruits have ripened sweet.
When their day comes, oh, gentle be the plow
and sweet again the harvest of their seeds.
I taste it in your mercy even now.

A plum tree with developing fruit By Fir0002 – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Hekerui., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25592935