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Barely a leaf─
just a remnant remained to turn aside the heat of day. A shame no shade spread under the unforgiving shadow of Nazarite branches shorn of summer (a season somehow nigh, always near, but not yet). Was the tree’s nakedness or mine to blame for the present state? I was an hungered and wished to God for a sign of precious fruit. But the east wind shook my palmerworm faith tunneling through grief. The wind scorched my cheek (but I marveled how the branches sat eerily still, unmoved by the storm). Is it better for me to die than to live a wasting death? I did not ask as others: Why must the tree wither? And what of our aprons when no leaves remain for covering? Are we to gird ourselves with thistles? I knelt beside the tree upon a marred girdle not caring who should discover my secret parts, crying: Lord, see my weakness─ my heart is an olive pitted by your hand, its stone carried forth with the ark of testimony. Where now the pomegranates of blue and purple and scarlet clinging to your covenant vine? Graft me: shy not away your pruning-hook. A fig appeared in my cradled palm opening as if split by the sharpness of God’s finger, its center cracked cleanly like hemispheres falling away from the Tropic of Capricorn. The fig was filled with clustered seeds sinking into rivulets of blood. I tasted its helicoid promises and felt the trembling heavens through the dirt beneath my feet, the stars casting fruit like unripe hailstones to the earth. I picked one from the ground, comparing, and knew: A seed is a seer. A seer is a seed. |