Mustard Tree

Reaching the end of the lumpy, mired road, you tend to

Wait. Years, sometimes.

A decade, more.

A decade of waiting.

Of anguished soulscreech,

Superheated tears, cracked elbows on the waxy altar rail,

Dessicated supplications, dry and white like old soldiers' bones,

That crumble and blow around, evaporating.

Lama, lama sabachthani?

But you find no answer on a fusty hassock, on your broken knees,

Just that long, slow, returning echo

That fixes your distance, how far away you are.

And, after the night whose minutes are longer than months,

The dawning of a careless permission,

To stand once again, hind-legged in the reflecting gaze of heaven,

Feeling the muscles of movement gather.

For all your holy waiting, you body knew more than you,

And now begins to test its coils

Feeling the season change

And the mud harden again into a road.

And the answer comes

Only when flesh and sinew tighten,

A blistered heel presses against the ruts

And a new land falls under the sole of its moving foot.