Tree of Life
Jen Delyth kelticdesigns.com
Tree of Life
- by Lucy Hinton, 2006
Human life-and-love
is a seamless blend of the ordinary
and the extraordinary;
the existence of each
is carved out
by the other
like all good paradoxes
The profane gives
the sacred
a place to abide.
Every day,
human hands
toil the soil,
caress their love
and meet in prayer
The roots and shoots
of the mundane and the holy
incessantly yoke
within one vessel
one intercourse
one sacrament of wine
and bread
The beloved's face
will sometimes scowl
and always age
Passionate vision
will some day
shake hands
with the spade
Neither need
ever
be any less
extraordinary
in the open gaze
of ordinary eyes
The human world
is the heavenly kingdom
containing
all the love
for which we starve
The earthly burden
of the living
is the envy
of the dead
who have no shadow
The mystic seeks not
to sing herself
to the otherworld
but to embrace more wholly
nature's riches here
in ordinary hearts
and work-boot miracles
both glorious-and-lowly!