When the Holy One stepped from endless order
into the chaos of our days, it was winter.
Weather blew everywhere. Time itself was dying.
The squirrel, with a tail soft as breath,
curled inside the maple trunk.

The cold stayed. Five-fingered leaves pressed the ground,
their stems perpendicular, thin wrists above each flame-tipped palm.
Cataclysm scanned the days; like any future, like our own.
The Holy One took face and voice, beginning with an infant cry,
took food and sleep, nestled in arms not unlike yours.

He listened to the dropping rain, watched it bead the naked twigs,
saw it polish stones and faces, stood once under this lift of sky
and still, in a word, understands.

Penelope Duckworth