The Moss Gatherer

Oh, Great Oak, how thick is your bark?
Do you hum like a lyre, do you sing like a lark?
Is your goal to be wealthy or mighty in power?
Or purify the air hour after hour?

Reaching up, you guard from wind and rain
Perhaps that’s your mission, your clever game?
Or is it to paint the hillside with color?
To bring life to the helpless like a nurturing mother?

        The Great Oak stands still, doesn’t give a response
        The Great Oak exists among creatures and fronds
        The Great Oak is all you expect it to be
        The Great Oak gathers moss, the Great Oak you see

Oh, Great Oak, how dense is your core?
Do you hope to improve, strive to do more?
Is your mission to serve or be catered to?
To have news spread abroad of all that you do?

Rooted and grounded, sturdy and sound
Do you yearn to disrupt, to bore holes in the ground?
A hardened shell covers your fortified fruit 
Splendor measured in height, a bark robe your suit

        The Great Oak stands still, doesn’t give a response
        The Great Oak exists among creatures and fronds
        The Great Oak is nothing you expect it to be
        The Great Oak gathers moss, the Great Oak you see

By Royce Waxenfelter
12.08.23

Note: The Great Oak in the poem is an analogy for God. We can wonder all we want about God, or we can observe and study God. We can even deny God. No matter how we see God, God exists with or without our notions of God. God is everything we could possibly dream and nothing we can fully fathom this side of Heaven.