Unadorned

Unadorned

(“God’s love will come together with his faithful people. Goodness and peace will greet them with a kiss.” Psalm 85:10)

Nature is not afraid to be unadorned.
I took a photo of two trees three days ago
and labeled it beautiful.
The leaves bled red and the
twigs held loosely the pumpkin orange
sticky notes as long as they could.

But walking by again after two nights of wind,
two nights of November,
the trees were bare, save the hangers-on,
gray crepe leaves turning in the breeze.

It is the parallax of beauty, viewed from the vantage
of weeks and months, that sticky green turns to crunchy beige,
while rain and ice take center stage.
It is the puzzle of perception that
stark arms hiding nothing can elicit wonder
as surely as a spring tree flooded with mockingbirds.

I have become raveled with all that is around me.
I am plaited and braided around god and the good earth.
I have my preferences, I like the sun,
I hear something so proud and ordinary it
makes me stop and wonder as much as a butterfly
lunching on a rose.

The rain can be good as the sun at sewing broken hearts
together. The dark can enter the jagged edges where
flesh was cut from flesh, where bruises ooze from barbed
wire trust or speeding through the night without rest.

That God would not fear to be unadorned,
to make dirt his crown, forest roots his footstool,
a sweaty body his home and encrusted feet his transportation.

That, on a bare tree we see his beauty bled red,
and then crepe grey as breath and heartbeat ebbed away.
That God would appear so tragic, frightening, dreadful

And so, absolutely, definitely and without a doubt…

Dead.

That, unlike spring, he did not lie dormant, but…

Died.

And, like spring, he pushed through the crammed earth
to meet us again, still wounded, but more alive than any
of us have ever been.

It is a wonder that God does not fear appearing unadorned.