With dust-encrusted knuckles pressed against my brow,
I shield my eyes 
from sun-soaked skies.
Oh, that a cavalcade of clouds 
would cross the firmament!

The soil was tilled; the air was clean;
and at the time it seemed
that planting wheat was meant for me.

I gave my all for this dry ground
which ordinarily would sound
like foolishness. And yet,
when you are called, however small,
into a no man’s land
by the Almighty’s hand,
you go.

You go, and you scatter
the sacred inner matter
you were predisposed to keep
from last year’s grain:
preserved within each shrouded shell,
life waits to burst apart the bonds of death
and grow.

So I spent my life,
and tilled and toiled,
and planted seeds.
Now all it needs
is rain – the one thing I cannot provide,
and not a shadow in the wide
expanse above foretells a coming storm.

I thought that this was Your command?
I gesture with a dirt-stained hand
to question-mark the vacant sky,
as if it’s mine to wonder why
He called me here to emptiness—
did I mistake His faithfulness?—
and I begin to mourn.

Then, from a crack in heaven’s floor
a speck on the horizon swells
and builds and multiplies its cells
until the sound’s a mighty roar.

The Gardener rumbles victory songs,
His hearty laugh eclipsing dread:
“behold, the wasteland is reborn
through torrent-giving thunderheads!”