All Through the Night

All through the night

into the morning hours

cold beads of rain

ice the tree's dark branches.

The trees are strong; they do not bend

and this becomes their downfall.

When you do not bend, you break.

The icy day becomes my classroom.

Near the ice sculptured trees

frozen little bushes, vines and cedars,

are bowed low in adoration

bent, but not broken.

The frozen trees, sad and beautiful,

moan and sway with the weight of reality.

Lovely ice sculptured arms

yield to the bitter truth of the moment

as the silence is harsly broken.

In its wake, a deafening silence

rises up from deep inside

where my tears are frozen

like the beads of rain

that fell through the night.

How do we name what happens

without condemning it?

This is nature's way;

There were no developers present.

Was the rain unknind to freeze?

Did it have a choice

to bend our break

to destroy or build?

Sometimes I fear reality.

--Macrina Wiederkehr

from The Circle of Life published March 2005,

by Joyce Rup and Macrina Wiederkehr

This was written at least 10 years ago

after the death of a tree I loved.

As I read it again after all these years

a question is born in my heart:

Is there anything in my life that has broken

because I was unable to bend?