Does your heart hurt?
Have you considered someone might be turning it,
the soil of your being,
that seeds might be spread.
Does your body ache?
Do you consider someone may be stretching it,
that through the birth canal
something new might emerge.
Does your soul feel a weight?
Perhaps it’s the sorrow of the world
making its way into fallow ground,
burrowing down
until spring warms the earth,
and the hard seeds within
have broken,
transforming to something else.
Yes, can you feel the ache of
change,
the yielding needed for
goodness to be dispersed.
If we can blossom through travail
then the birds will come,
and gather the new seeds
from our painful growth,
spread them somewhere else.
Ana Lisa de Jong
Living Tree Poetry
October 2021
‘I saw his presence coming to us the way that he came into Mary.’
~ From Yield – Melissa Helser and Phyllis – Worship and prayer for Advent
Living Tree Poetry 