A Fall in Love

"You will recognize them by their fruit..."

Matthew 7:16

A Fall in Love

(For my wife, Katie)

See Reality's center show 

A Tree, a bloodied, barren One.  

A glory of weighty Fruit it bears! 

Fruit, bitterly with poignance spied

Yet that sets sweetness upon every sin-tied tongue

Who weep to whisper a hungering prayer,

Waiting the fertile shadow-valley's divide. 

Abraham sowed a sonly seed

To die at the marriage of earth and sky,

And we, my beloved sprouted too

But grew bark that hardened, cracked -

A sad and sullen Fall in love. 

Lost we were. I to you and you to me. 

So nearly did the promised fade to black!

Now we, bright eyed and sticky-cheeked

Taste the work of emptied vines -

Know the health of having died. 

The sting swallowed up our in-toward powers

but God has harrowed that loathsome hive

Driving now from tear-sown seeds

The honeyed glow of climbing flowers.