Ice fell from the sky last night,
and tree branches now bear its weight.
We heard them groan and crack in the dark,
gun shots ringing out through the still woods.
In the morning some limbs hang at awkward angles,
the pale flesh of their trunks gaping at us through the leaves.
Above us other branches stretch to the sky,
glittering as the sun adorns each one with a thousand diamonds.
In these icy boughs, beautiful and broken,
I see the weight of sin and
the light that still shines through it, never to be overcome.
The Rev. Sarah Puryear lives in Nashville with her family and serves as priest associate at St. George’s Episcopal Church.
