Andrew

Expand

"Expand!"

the Gardener cries to the desert.

"Make room!

To bring the fruit, We must first break the soil."

His voice, now quiet,

is echoed by distant mountains.

They groan,

and they grow,

and they stretch their necks to see

the new and lovely things that come to be.

The echo is not heard, but felt-

In reverberating wakes,

the ground shakes,

splinters,

straightens.

The stones cry out:

"Mercy!"

The Maker's voice calls clouds as witnesses,

heavy

rolling

reeling,

they labor between light and land.

Land:

parched,

hopeless,

spent.

The Master's eyes see what can be

and what will be soon;

not just what is.

He presses the palm of His hand

to the hot red face of the sand,

and water springs up to meet Him,

the Son of Man

where He stands.

At first the water starts in trickling spurts,

and licks the Master's fingers.

But then it turns into a torrent -

Water:

well,

deep, 

and wide.

The water is a warrior,

a washer,

a medic,

and a mother.

She prays, pleads, and plans,

but does not wait to act.

She comes teeming

to desolate places,

with haste,

and violent hope.

And where there is hope,

There soon is life:

Grass, and flower, and shrub, and tree.

See now how time and toil

turns deserts into gardens.

In toil quick and long,

the grass embraces ground

that does not love it back,

nor want it to survive.

But life will thrive;

for that is it's nature.

It springs where it is planted,

not for its own sake,

but for the soil it breaks.

Life does not divide;

It multiplies.

The blade becomes the flower,

who prophesies from pain.

The flower loves the bush,

a stronger generation.

The bush becomes the tree,

who dreams of what might be,

while she tosses her hair in the wind,

and flings fruit haphazardly at her feet.

What seems at first to be waste and rot

is the seed of regeneration.

A place forgotten by all but the Sun

is the perfect canvas of creation.