How nature sings its preparation

I got a new body for my broken camera recently. For nearly a year, I've been without this extra eye, and I've felt its absence.

Maybe you're like me. When words hide underground amidst a churning of thoughts, I seek expression in pictures. Let them do the talking, my heart insists. I am not ready to speak.

So, as has been my pull this Advent season, I head outdoors, with eyes scanning for signs of the world preparing her earthen house for the coming Christ. For how can I put this to words, but that my ears have grown a tad weary and wary of so many human voices speaking on behalf of Christ? So I step out where the voices sing soft, so soft I need to silence mine to listen, and when I do, I hear their strength wrapped in subtlety of poetry. Unfinished, colorful, mysterious, laced with hope, they speak.

For those who have ears to hear, eyes to see.

How they prepare the way.

 Clinging to the branch, dying

that slow fade of death that precedes 

life,

yes - but still 

alive, blood red.

 Waiting,

watching,

for glad tidings,

great joy,

quiver of hope from the heavens,

 for the light holding

fast in the sullen skies,

the light,

the food,

the drink,

hanging from the tree.

 The rising Morning Star,

obscured;

the skeleton trees clapping

their hands;

 the flocks of the forest

piercing the skies

with song;

 the wizened trees bowed low.

 

Wings lifted to the wind,

 they perch,

they wait.

For Love that came 
once, as a tiny seed.

And then a forest,

ever spreading.

Instinctively, they know
Love will come again.

Linking up with Unforced Rhythms, hosted this month at Beth's blog, newly renamed Trading Good for Grace.

And linking a late Five-minute Friday, to the prompt of "Prepare."

For more Advent reflections, click here - and here.