The oak trees by the creek are sweating blood.


There where the fire passed through, pressed by the wind,


their barks are blackened, and oozing through the singe,


red beads of sap drip sorrowingly down


to ashes. If we knew Gethsemane


were not a garden anymore and wept


itself, the knotty foreheads of each burl


contracted in one brow of woe, our prayer


would not be for life’s cup but merely that


our hearts might burn within us. Seared and scarred,


we’d bleed in hope of olives buried deep


among the roots, where what remains may rise.