Below is a Good Friday and Easter poem centered around the Bible’s use of trees. It is written by Leslie Leyland Fields, a prolific writer, speaker, and Alaskan fisherwoman. Her website is http://www.leslieleylandfields.com . She kindly allowed me to reprint this poem with permission. Accompanying artwork is from artists of my church, First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs. A blessed Easter to each of you, dear readers. He is risen!
Easter Uproot
By Leslie Leyland Fields
I know what they thought
When they whipped him
Skin-split him
hung him out to die,
even when they speared his body dry…
I know what they thought when
they locked his cold, shrouded
flesh into the rock,
deaf to watering cries.
This was what they knew
And did best: death. Burial.
The blessed rooting out
Of an upstart.
But Jesus was not buried—
he was planted.
He, the perfect seed
pulled from the crucifixion tree
tamped into rock and dust,
watered with blood,
the spit of fear—-
It was all that he needed, Jesse’s root
to wind past death, free,
to shoot through stone
a forest of buds, green leaves,
and below, roots deep, vining through
ten thousand years,
through Eden’s garden
the temple’s golden palms
Isaiah’s righteous oaks,
Myrtle, broomwood, acacia,
Lebanon’s cedars
evergreen cypress,
withering fig
Zaccheus’ Sycamore seat
the trees of the field that clap
their hands
the fronds beneath the
donkey’s hooves
the olive tree that bears our graft and
the tree of twelve flowerings
planted in the rushing, living river
of the city of God,
whose leaves will heal
the wounds of the people.
And all the birds of the sky
will come and nest,
and all the beasts of the field
will gather and feed in the shade
Of the blessed seed,
Start-up rooted
for us
that planting day.
