My brother and I had stood for years
Offering cooling shade from the sun’s hot light
Signalling the breeze waves of delight
Marking the way from there to here with just our sight
But like all out kind
Our days are often cut short
Some cursed to burn in flames of life
Others reformed with by calloused hands
My brother was blessed
His body reformed to hold back the night
Transformed to join others
In offering shelter from the cold of night
He’d been witness to the Light’s birth
Into our realm of time and space
Where he had come to free us all
From the man’s damning curse
I had been shorter than he
Not good for shelter too short too weak
But too straight to waste in the fires
So many others endured at the end of life
No I saved for a more sinister purpose
To become the mechanism of death
One of the sinner would suffer
For the crimes he had done
My death would bring death
My strength would choke out their life
As they suffered for breath through bones broken
Causing blood to stain my sides
On that fateful day when again death would brush my face
My peace with my destiny was crushed
When I learned of the cruelest twists
Which would ever tempt the hands of fate
I would not be the article
Which man would use
To remove a man who’d murdered an innocent
From this worlds view
No, I would be the one
Who would murde the One
I would be the reason Light’s love
Would die high on a hill
Oh how can this be
What crime have I done
To be the one object in all Creation
To hold the dying Son
But as he hung in my arms
Bleeding from wounds
Gasping for the last living breath
I began to see the end of something I did not expect
Darkness was coming
Not in conquest of the Light
But being drawn in unwilling
As it’s power unable to remain in contorl of this long dark night
Oh my brother had the joy
Of seeing the baby born
But I die in peace knowing
Sin’s curse is crushed forever more
This death which I first saw as the end
Is only the beginning
For Light remains for ever
As death itself ends its reign
J.Rhett Lively 