On Behalf of Growth by Sarah Tate

I stand with something as elusive as a shadow.
Here within the glistening grasses,
the tufts shooting up from ice-melt.

Somehow, I can believe the winter mornings,
as cold and gray as stones,
exist only to build a dais for the sunlight’s gold
as it slants in the afternoon, shimmering
like a million beads of rain in the spring
before disappearing somewhere under the earth.

Something not of dreams but of tangible mass,
like the callouses on a carpenter’s fingers,
or a sun-dusted steeple on a cathedral’s spire.
As if God, in this very moment, sows petaled life
to grow along the asphalt rims of a burned-out road,
weaving Eden back into the world’s shattered bones
with the threads of Christ’s stripes, with the remains,
tattered and hanging, from the veil torn at the folds.

And I can imagine how his love might be newborn
lilies in me, unfurling from beneath the crystals
of frost-thaws in the shadow cast by the cross.
In the grass, I stand while God melts the cold soil
and dark sheets of ice with nothing but his breath,
turning all this stone into ragged, beating flesh.

I am a writer, a poet, and am passionate about how literature can capture both the light and shadows of human existence and highlight God’s tender heart and all-consuming love. I live in rural Virginia where God especially uses his creation to display his creativity and beauty.