To seek the cross, I fall down on my knees.
I open my eyes. The cross has come to me,
a tree with fruit growing on each bough.
Mine hangs low—perhaps I can pick it now.
The fruit hangs low, yet not in easy reach.
Repentance is a slow ripening peach.
I stand on my toes and stretch. It falls
into my hand in answer to my call.
ii. Confessing and Forsaking
To taste its sweetness, I prayed without words.
My inarticulate groans were a bird’s
calling for its mate lost in the world.
But I was the lost, from my first faith hurled.
Lonely and hopeless I at last could see
the harm I’d done to many who loved me,
and though I held back from the narrow track
to the sacred Tree, hope glimmered on the path.
Speak, she said, whom I most wronged, just speak
the plain truth! Leave nothing out—no weak
apologies! Tear it from your heart,
and then in peace, perhaps as friends, we’ll part.
I spoke, though I feared that I might break.
I had a vision in the grocery store
by the peaches and pomegranates. In my ear
I heard her voice pleading to be let go
with such bruised feelings I could not say no.
Sleepless, I imagined myself a high
leafless tree under a weeping sky,
our tears commingling as if they were one,
hers and mine and our still clueless son’s,
feeding the root of pain through the long nights.
iii. Tree of Life, Liquidambar styraciflua
A sweetgum watches over me; its five-
pointed stars filter the sun that slantwise
slips into my room, finds me in bed
and feeds my meditations like broken bread:
broken bread, my private metaphor
for the kindness of the gum tree, loving neighbor
whose light and shadow entering my window
sway as the tree sways and lend a glow
that warms the room and makes its plainness shine.
I own nothing. Everything is mine.
Dear sweetgum, offshoot from the primal Tree
of Life, transplanted to dapple light on me
like blessings, dear flowing Liquidambar,
in leaf and limb you hold the living waters.
iv. Fruit of the Tree
“Hang your burden on my boughs.
My strength is infinite.“
“I cannot lift it off my shoulders,
to muscle and bone fast knit.”
“I am the surgeon; trust my loving care.”
“All I can pay Thee with is prayer.”
“And serve others as I’ve served you?”
“Lord, is that something I can do?”
J. S. Absher is currently revising his 70,000-word memoir of his father.
