With the Strength of Madness

The last Fall leaves flit as yellow or rust butterflies

who float so softly amidst the pods and peas.

The trees have shed their coats to expose their bones,

nests tenuously sway amidst the chilled air,

on one notch of trunk and bough,

the heavens are hung with life. 

The forest flutters with anticipation,

winter knocks the trees together,

dew turns to crystalline fragments on the forest floor.

A copse of Birch, branches all bent and broken,

sulking skeletons remembering their fine paper coats,

quiver with a quiet question why?

Must the trees endure the storms and furies while

one season away from losing their last breath,

still hopefully hanging on to God,

on and on, life goes on…

The winds seem to shush the woods.

This moment might be the holy of holies!

Will the angels announce Her glory?

The treetops create a quavering crown

 worn by Her as the sun begins to set.

Here, God is within grasp

of the trees outstretched arms and returning leaves,

God filters down to the browning Mums and yellowing grasses.

But now, She, with the strength of madness,

drives the freezing winds that crystallizes dew into frost,

who whips the last, lingering leaves into the river’s wrath,

takes no prisoners, She is death, and then, life again.

The skies grows darker earlier and earlier,

in these blackened hours the forest must endure.

Where is God when the cold winds blow?

When all there is, is the dark and snow?

She’s a tempest that has no end,

a cold God pleading to be complete, 

the underbelly of the divine seems to take and take.

In this winter’s unending unrest,

God’s found in the frozen husks of seeds,

within the need to receive and conceive,

in the hope that life lives on.  Once more,the trees silently stand in wondrous awe.