Bare stumps of your branches
And hollow whistle of wind
In the gaps between them.
Colourless bark covers you.
In the dead of winter
You are still.
Until one day
There comes
A rush of life
In the trilling on the trees,
In the warmth of the sun,
In the touch of a breeze,
And the force of inevitable change
In the swelling of the streams.
And with your blossoms
Explodes life
Death cannot hold.
If God loves a tree like this
How does He love me?
*Brother Lawrence was a XVII century French Carmelite monk who converted while watching a bare tree in the winter and thinking of it blooming in the spring.