I sip my morning tea and watch a tree of elfin
leaves a-quiver in a gentle breeze; and when the
winds whip up their strength to bluster through their
fragile lives, I watch them tremble fearfully;
*
as if they know the wind has
power unimagined in their tininess;
has traveled far beyond their
narrow ken—from Arctic cold,
perhaps, or from some arid desert strip;
spoken with the Bora, or the Mistral or the
Foehn; spoken in a thousand tongues to
whisper secrets of colossal power, of
fear, of joy audacious and immense.
*
No wonder, then, these wee leaves quiver at the
murmurs of this wind and tremble when
she boasts of all the hallowed marvels of this
world so vast and strange. Sometimes
she causes me to tremble too; tremble at the
power of Holy Wind that weaves this
fearsome, wondrous tapestry of life; tremble at the
tenderness of Ageless Wind who stepped one
day into our time and took on human hands,
hands open-nailed at Golgotha to reach and
hold us lovingly—each one of us,
each tiny leaf,
each tiny life
a-quiver in the winds that sing their
joys and sadness through the
disappearing hours of our days.
from the slow lane 