Oak Leaf

A poor outline of parched lips.
A blunt spearhead, blood-rusty and brittle with age,
long past its ripeness to pierce someone’s side.
The slender fragment of an old map
printed with the topography
of a far, famine-smitten country,
one ancient riverbed running its length
with branching, thread-veined tributaries dry,
brownish-red runnels brittle, blocked
with the petrified dust of sap.

It still retained a dull luster,
embalmed—the glaze of death
over the lineaments of surface,
the underbelly grainy,
lacking in the gift to grasp light.

Stem like a heart, darkened--
a channel drained and withered,
choked with plaque.
Blackish spots like tumors blossoming,
furthering its flowering into decay.

In my fist I grind it,
rubbing the pieces between my fingers,
sifting the chaff,
culling the grist
before scattering it
as if seeds to be sown
over the thistle-rich earth.

--
Scott Schuleit is the Associate Pastor at North Palm Baptist Church. He enjoys preaching, teaching, the arts, theology, and spending time with his dear wife Christina. His poems and essays have appeared in various publications. He is the author of one book entitled A Pernicious Correspondence: Letters from a Devil (Prevail Press, 2021).

'Oak Leaf' was first published in Christianity & Literature. The kind of oak leaf considered in the poem was from a Southern Live Oak.