Tree

The Final Sermon

We have no priests but the dying

When our first grays appear

When the skin webs with smiles and squints

We sew.

We stitch our vestments.

We embroider

We weave

We knot our story

The colors are in riots

Or have the subtlety of fog

It is a solitary choice but created in community

Those you crawled with

Fought with

Raised babes with

Your tribe will gather weekly to sew and gossip

We workshop our sermons

The lessons of our lives.

We repeat the tales until they leave ruts in our village

The walls shake with laughter some nights

Another the wails bring the banshees close

When it is one’s time the tribe comes

Robes and sashes are fitted and pinned

The person walks or is carried to our chapel

And the bell is rung

We come

The youngsters skip

The parents whisper their guesses

The teens flirt

The elders grumble with envy

We take our seats and wait

It is their first and final sermon

We have no priest

Why would we listen to a man who has lived a half life?

We listen to those who have something to say

About their first breath to this moment

They absolve us of the wrongs done

Though many take the opportunity to catalogue and remind

We absolve them

As they walk the aisle we wish them well

We toss petals, fallen leaves, or snow

Some bow

Some skip

On cackled and threw a lewd gesture

As they walk to the edge of our forest.

As they entire the darker lands

We go back to their cottage

We speak of their stories

What we liked

What we learned

What we will do differently

We have no priests here but the dying.

It was a young man. I found him all ribs and wet eyes. A hare of a boy. Fight or flight in the sinew of his thigh. He had a curiosity to find his mother in the forest. What he found in the trees besides myself he has not spoken of. Perhaps someday. Until then he has weekly met me for tea as he regains his strength and shape and tells me the sermons he remembers. Perhaps I will ask him to write one for the boy who left his village to preemptively go into a forbidden forest to find the one who had loved him best. A teacher wiser than I thinks it may be healing.