Numb-nerved roots plumb frigid ground.
Death, not prayer, rules the apple grove.
Love, not death, moves Jesus in his alcove.
Soundlessly apples fall earthbound.

Tapped sap opens the maple’s wound.
The moon pulls earthly seas in gravity’s groove.
The wall of roses spent, thorns lasso the loose
trellis. Time owns the shroud and the crown

if God is time and time is the side of Jesus
(speared to blood and water, given nard and aloe).
Blood and water like the fruit inside the cactus.
Is it hard to make a world? The word ab initio?

The new is grafted to the old to grow:
verdant world’s woe of blight Eve would know.