There goes the tree again,
shifting its cloak from summer green
to the fading olive of something fresh that has
been in the refrigerator’s vegetable drawer too long.
Lively harvest hues are soon to come (to my eye’s satisfaction)
then the death that is burnt brown, before
shameless nudity and winter.

There goes the sun,
never bored or tardy in its course:
horizon to horizon like a runner making laps
as though it is the most fulfilling thing in the world to mark
the same landscape over and over again, round and round and
around again; and to the sun it is delight enough
to follow that path.

And there goes a song,
catching my heartbeat in its rhythm;
I might pause the metronome or press mute
but still the song strains forward: ABA, chorus, bridge,
da capo al fine, ti ever longing for do from Beethoven to Bono.
The song sways, swells,
falls, rests.

Faithfulness conjoins
our fullness and our finiteness;
the tree is a tree in all seasons, also the sun,
even the song knows its bars. I would do well to learn:
to let my faithfulness include the willingness to be finite, which
then allows God to be faithful in infiniteness
and full within me.