Talking Waters

A valued acquaintance sent me this link yesterday:

Sacraments

How does last night’s fallen snow
feel about the morning sun’s radiant touch?

Is there a deep yearning to be melted,
or is there a great fear of death?

I whisper:
“They can be one, the same.”

The sharp-shinned hawk throws himself,
like Cupid’s hell-bent arrow,
head on into the bough-damp cedars.

He has faith in a universal memory
that has never occupied him personally.

“There will be nourishment at the core of
this dark and tangled thicket.”

And he is correct,

Emerging with brown, floppy-necked sparrow
in his blood-warmed talons.

He makes no apology for taking a life
to secure his own,

But he does pull each of the sparrow’s feathers
and set them fluttering free into the blue of sky
as his particular way
of making an offering to the Holy.

And is this what it’s all about? I wonder:
Every act of life, a sacrament.

© 2012/Jamie K. Reaser

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