Dead Wood

I walk the skirt of the arid wood,
where the stench of memory, molding and dead,
hangs thick upon the air
a shroud that drapes the winding path,
where buried anchors twist and rise like grasping hands.

The way is bright, a thread of gold
unraveling through the rot,
glowing with glow among the things
that should not grow,
but still they do
knotted, gnarled, curled against the sun.
Deadwood reaching, barring the way.
And through the thorns, the sowers walk,
lowing among their lies.

I peer between the emptied trunks,
eyes and knees bent with disease,
as glow, thin as splintered glass,
hemorrhages through the outstretched fingers of trees.
Beyond, a city high, resplendent
where life spills down the hillside green
but stops at the edge of the withered wood.

My heart burns to set the bramble ablaze,
to carve a path to the cloudless sky,
but shadow looms, the way is lost,
the way is blocked.
A fallen log, thick and wide,
its girth swallows my blaze whole.
Where live-coals stirred, now only powder
rises and swirls in fading glow.

But not far off, an axe
its blade buried deep in a dead man’s tree,
its edge rusted, wedged, forgotten.
To its handle, a hand still clings,
withered, as if in prayer.
His flesh fed the wood long ago.
What did he dream before he fell?
What trees did he bring low?
What hope did he hold when the axe slipped free?

Where he failed, I will not.
I rip the axe from the corpse’s grip,
pry the steel from bark and bone.
And though the city calls my name out,
though the song of blaze-lit tongues
spills down the hill in waves,
one thing bars my way, this fallen tree.

So I swing.

A frenzied rain of steel on wood,
a war waged with blade and lungs.
The dry grain drinks my fury,
drinks the cup of my rage
poured out through splinter and shard.
I swing.
Thoughts like wood beetles bore through my skull.
I swing.
Cries for belonging echo back from the trees.
I swing.
The sun is setting-hope falls with it.

Crack

the wood groans.
Once more. Twice.
The axe arcs, swift, desperate.
A crimson sky hemorrhages glow through brittle leaves.
The night is near, and the beasts prepare
shadows stir beyond the timber.

I smell the fruit of my labor
palms weeping round the winepress of the axe handle.
I swing harder.
The beasts are coming.
My shadow has grown long.
I have been laboring for such a time
but the log remains.
I swing again.

Then…a hole.

A small wound in the wood,
a prick of hope to feed my blows.
A cry tears from my throat
one last swing, and the tree gives way.

But my toast to victory turns to vinegar
for beyond, where the path should be,
lie not one, not ten,
but thousands of fallen trees,
each twice the size of this one.

The path is gone.
I am undone.
This cannot be done.

Amber glow wanes,
the last rays casting blaze on the deadwood.
Weak, beaten, sinking low,
my knees meet the earth.

The dead man’s hand beckons,
“Come. Rest a while.”
My own hands, upturned,
scroll with crimson ink.
What stories I could write.

So I carve a scarlet note into the log,
the axe resting silent at my side.

“You cannot pass nor fell this wood.
If axe or effort could or should,
I would have passed before the day
was gone. And yet, my bones attest,
my frame was used by beasts for food.
I hear the music soaring loud
as fades my heart and swoons my hope.
For the King, in His great power,
ceased to grant my rescue from the beasts.
Yet as the darkness closes in,
I feel the burden of my sin.
Not my might can for sin atone.
The King must save, and Him alone.”

I close my eyes.

My eyes are opened.

A still, small sound from a distance.
From a high place.
From the path above.
The sound of water coming.

It builds, swelling like a song,
a rush, a roar, a mighty the pull,
until the earth trembles beneath it.
I rise, lest I drown,
and high upon the hill, I see
waters falling through the gates,
spilling from the doors of the Holy City,
tumbling like music from a harp.

It shines like diamonds
adorning a crown of life.
And life it gives,
to all it touches.

Toppled trees stand,
stretch their limbs,
bud with leaves, fresh and new.
The fallen logs that barred the way
are carried off,
washed down, far beyond sight.

My hands, worn and bloodied,
washed clean in the the pull.
And as the current fades,
so too does my pain.
Every sorrow, every burden,
every misery trails into the deep.
The water is replaced with a voice
a voice like many waters.

My feet find purchase on new earth.
I run.

Up the hill, where He is, and I am not.
That is all that matters now.

And in a glow so bright,
I am bathed in its immense beauty
reveling in the presence
of He who speaks and waters roar,
who sings and the universe wakes,
who bends down.

Down.

Way down.

To take my hand,
where I would drown in the desert without Him.

And somehow

I am made new.