Poem

Tree Across the Street

Image by: Leslie Bustard

Published on:

January 30, 2023

Read time:

1 min.

“Let us stretch ourselves out towards him,
that when he comes he may fill us full."
—St. Augustine

The tree across the street,
the one framed in our front window,
was slowly losing its leaves

until yesterday’s wind came.
Now only a scattering of red
and orange remain,
exposing a maze of branches

reaching out,
stretching up.

And then there is my heart,
how gradually I reveal it
to me to you

to God.

How my longings reach out
and then stretch

and stretch up,
waiting to be filled.

And in the spring,
the tree in our window shines
in the afternoon sun,
rich with its pink flowers

and its green leaves.

Leslie Bustard

Leslie Anne Bustard fills her time caring for loved ones and writing. Her first book of poetry, The Goodness of the Lord in the Land in the Living: Selected Poems of Leslie Anne Bustard, will be released in 2023. She co-edited Wild Things and Castles in the Sky: A Guide to Choosing the Best Books for Children. Much of her writing can be found at Cultivating and her website, Poetic Underpinnings. She is a regular contributor to The Black Barn Online and keeps busy as a partner of Square Halo Books.

An earlier version of this poem was published in The Goodness of the Lord in the Land of the Living: Selected Poems of Leslie Anne Bustard.

Cover image by Cole Freeman.