The Beloved and the Bride Awaken the Dawn

(part 3)



So many things change

--most of them, gradually--

so many

so gradually

who notices?

Until change is remarkable.

But only to the observant.



And so this would-be warrior

hardly noticed

when death--as scraped bones, couched within

unstable sepulchers of sand--

gave way to life

in grass and trees.

Well into the change was he

before he looked up

from his weary

trudging feet

to see--

new terrain.

Looked up, for he saw strange shadows

--limbs of trees

and flying birds,

things living.

Strange shade,

for shadows had (long days)

been merely an attachment

to the high and frozen clouds.



Suddenly, he saw:

he walked a new world.

Scrubby, true.

But no longer exposed.

That wasted bare ground,

it was covered with life,

covered with meaning.



Alert now, he heard

(at last)

the welcome

that hummed

and fumed

and wafted

in this place.



So he noted, that his first welcome came

from the trees.

The cedar washed its aroma over him--

that tree whose song acknowledged restoration:

of the leper to his health

and to his home.

The warrior-to-be was cleansed.



His second welcome came

from the trees.

The acacia,

she reached--her thorny arms

her pods

all blackish--reached to embrace him.

"I carried Noah,"

she reminded.

And the warrior-to-be was rescued.



His third welcome came

from the trees.

As groves of myrtles whispered to him,

the scent of a stallion still in their branches,

whispered reminders of days long gone

that were nonetheless called to revival-destiny:

"Remember days festival,

when our branches were(are) pruned

for the making of boothes.

Remember."

And the warrior-to-be was inspired.


His fourth welcome came

from the trees.

Richest of all, the olive dripped,

so deep was the dignity of his welcome.

"Know,"

said he,

"my seed is within me,

and fruit I yield

after my own kind."

And the warrior-to-be was sated.



So together the fir and the pine and the box tree

cheered the moving man

whose stride no longer

fell weary.

"I sing for you, with the harps that

even now

await their forming from my branches,"

cried the fir.

"I sing for you,"

rustled the wind-kissed box tree,

her branches raised in perpetual praise.

At last, the pine cried out, stately

between the other two:

"We three, note us as you pass.

For it is we that proclaim

the sanctuary.

We that make the place of the feet

of the One

glorious."

And the warrior,

in passing, thought of feet.

How different a footprint in the forest

from a footprint in the sand.

Yet how similar.



So the warior overtook those hills and mountains
(deep stone servants)

called as intervention

in a vast fierce desert.

There, he remembered a rediscovering:

desert beauty locked

in the petals
of a rose;

so likewise now he reconsidered

diverse blessings mounding and resting
in fertile lands.



And as revisiting the desert had transformed his fear,

so revisiting the fertile lands transformed his pride.

And an awesome man was he,
though not yet a warrior, still...

a man of humble courage...

a man peculiar in any world.



But before he could pause long to reflect on his own transformation,

an old man stood beneath the box tree.

And he thought it the same old man who spoke days before

at the gate,

but figured that impossible.

"Seek ye the place where the desert holds the moon?"

spoke the wizened old mouth.

And the warrior gaped

just a little.

"Did I not just pass that country?"
he asked.



The old eyes twinkled.

"The pools are but a prophecy,
sent for thee.
Dost thou not wish to find its fulfillment?

She that lives upon that hill--"

and a long shaking finger pointed.

The warrior's eyes raked along

an invisible trajectory

to find a hill before a hill,

where a large white house of cedar wood

stood nestled before

a stand of evergreens.

Gabled in goodness,

floating on a crest of cool green,

a house he had never seen,

but still somehow had always hoped

existed.

"She lives there,"

the old man simply said.

It didn't quite fit.

And yet it did.



The warrior-to-be was curious.