Custodians All

We walk beneath a sky we did not weave,
drawing breath from air fashioned long before our names were spoken.

The Tree of Life stands everywhere at once—
its roots drinking from veins of hidden water,
its green hands lifting birds, fowl, blossoms, beasts, and dreams.
From its endless boughs come the first cries of infants,
from its sheltering shade the final exhalations of the old.
We own no leaf, no river, no wingbeat.

The earth is not an inheritance written to us—
it is a living cradle loaned to our keeping.

Yet see what our hands can become.

A child plants a sapling where a hillside once bled bare soil,
and years later a fox slips through the cool pinnacle of its shade.
Clear streams run over polished stones, silver with trout.
Wildflowers spill colors across meadows like scattered paint the firmament.
A rescued dog sleeps safely at a doorstep.
Migrating geese stitch dark threads across a crimson sunset.
The air tastes of rain and pine;
the water mirrors stars;
life multiplies in quiet abundance.

And see what our hands can also do.

Rivers choke beneath slick rainbows of poison.
The soil cracks open like a parched tongue begging the clouds for mercy.
Trees fall in bruised heaps, their rings of memory exposed.
Flowers bloom beside roads dusted with ash.
A seabird carries plastic in its hollow belly.
Animals wander through forests reduced to smoke and stumps.
The wind grows harsh with exhaust and sorrow,
and even the sunlight seems to pass through a wound.
The Tree of Life trembles, yet still struggles to bear fruit.

For life is stranger and holier than possession.

We arrive empty-handed and depart the same.
The breath entering our lungs is borrowed;
the breath leaving them is returned.
We are not masters of creation, nor its creditors.

We are custodians all…

keepers of a miracle that continually births itself.

And in a room where dusk gathers

like soft blue water,
a child places a wilted daisy

into the hands of an elderly grandparent

nearing a final breath.
The elderly grandparent studies the drooping flower

with quiet puzzlement,
then cups it carefully between trembling palms

and through shining tears—

 smiles.