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 harshly 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 unkind to freeze?
Did it have a choice?
Do we have a choice
to bend or break
to destroy or build?

Sometimes I fear reality.

© Macrina Wiederkehr
All rights reserved.

from The Circle of Life published March 2005,
by Joyce Rupp and Macrina Wiederkehr