With arms outstretched on the hill
An American chestnut tree stands resureected.
Silently she draws new life from an old, dead stump
Where her ancestors died with blighted roots a hundred years ago.
She bears witness to the graves lying stoneless in her valley.
The sunken earth is the only marker
For brothers and sisters enslaved, laid too shallow.
The woodland cemetery is adorned with vine wreathes
Among pawpaws and May apples that keep wake.
People lay down and wept here in the shadow of death.
The rising Chestnut holds this broken history in her belly.
On this sacred ground an owl flies at half-mast and calls out,
"We cannot kill what God calls very good."
Nothing is forsaken since love seeps through
Shallow graves and dead stumps.
We weep for blights and injustices,
But even if we hung up our lyre,
The bluebirds and yellowbellied sapsuckers
Sing for the weary, "There is love after death."
-- The Rev. Becca Stevens, from Love Heals (p. 98), 2017
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