A Tree and Its Star

All its life
the tree has been reaching.

Not hurriedly.
Not like a man
trying to prove something.

But steadily,
as trees do,
with their dark feet
in the earth
and their green hands
open to the sky.

Who can say
when it first noticed
the star?

Perhaps when it was only
a thin stem
among the grasses,
shaken by rain,
hardly taller
than the small brown sparrow
that landed beside it.

Perhaps even then
it felt, above itself,
one light
calling from the great dark.

Not all the stars.
Not the whole glittering congregation.

One star.

Its star.

And so it grew.

Year after year,
it lifted its branches
a little higher.

It endured the winter
with its mouth closed.

It drank from the black soil.

It let the wind
teach it flexibility.

It let the sun
teach it praise.

And always,
when night opened
its blue-black field,
there was the star,
still far away,
still shining,
still impossible.

Isn’t this the way
with certain loves?

They stand above us
like a light
we did not invent
and cannot command.

Yet because of them,
we grow.

We become taller
in the soul.

We send out leaves
where there had been
only bark.

We learn the patience
of rooted things.

But longing
is not only longing.

Hidden inside the reaching
is another dream.

The tree dreams
that one night
the star will loosen
from its high place
and fall.

Not in ruin.

Not in fire
that destroys.

But as a bright mercy
crossing the dark.

The tree dreams
of the star descending
through the night air,
coming closer and closer,
until the light
it has loved from afar
rests at last
among its branches.

Imagine it.

The whole tree
holding still.

The leaves trembling.

The earth below
full of roots
and silence.

The star,
no longer only distant,
but near enough
to warm the wood.

Near enough
to make every branch
remember why it had risen.

Perhaps two lovers
once stood beneath such a tree
and understood this
without saying much.

Perhaps one pointed
to the branches,
the other to the star.

Perhaps they smiled
at the old mystery:

that love is both
the reaching
and the answer,

both the rooted life
and the falling light.

The tree does not ask
to own the star.

It does not want
to make heaven
less heavenly.

It wants only
what all faithful longing wants:

to know
that the light
which called it upward
has also, somehow,
been longing downward.

And maybe this
is the secret
the tree has been keeping.

That growth
is not merely becoming tall.

It is preparing
the heart
for what may arrive.

It is making room
in the branches.

It is learning
how to receive
without closing the hand.

All night
the tree waits.

All night
the star shines.

And somewhere
between earth and heaven,
between desire
and grace,
the dark is crossed
by a sudden brightness.

For one beautiful moment
the tree is not only reaching.

It is answered.