by Darlene Moore Berg
FIG TREE PARABLES
When something happens to devastate us,
what survives of our faith’s roots?
I. After Gospel of Mark 11:12 “It wasn’t the season for figs.”
Devastated down to its roots the fig tree withered.
Leaves shriveled black: no fruit, no refreshment
during a time of need for its Lord, its Creator God.
What if the fig tree admonished by our Lord,
after withering down to the ground, came back,
a resurrection of its own after our Lord ascended?
And came to feed weary pilgrims on the Way years hence?
What if from the depths of the earth God’s grace extended
into the fig’s deepest roots.
II. A Fig Story
Who plants a fig tree in Missouri’s USDA Zone 5?
No doubt encourage by its name Chicago Fig.
The one foot twig with buds for leaves and scant roots
nestled amidst herbs bordering the lawn
leafed out and “died” in the killing frost: one season’s sojourn.
Unseen, forgotten one year into the next.
Unknown, roots spread underground.
One late spring witnessed the emergence:
green-lobed fig leaves wider than a young man’s hand.
Slim trunk stretching one foot, two over the summer.
Dying back into the ground in the cold branch’s dry husks.
Repeat one year, the next: a resurrection found.
Stronger, wider, taller but each winter succumbing to the ground.
Called to life in late spring’s hot sun, May into June.
Perseverance: one day, fruit will come.
One day in September, a ripe fig comes to hand.
Understand a harvest isn’t guaranteed.
Note how large and luxurious this fig’s foliage:
leaves edible, cooked or steeped into a tea.
A race, year by year before the frost leaves
fruit, blackened on stalks. Figs picked green do not ripen.
Here now, see a palm full of five purpled figs:
A harvest of hope so sweet. Take and eat.
DARLENE MOORE BERG
Darlene Moore Berg considers herself an avocational poet. She has written off and on for the past three decades, maintaining a blog entitled A Sometimes Poet and a Substack by the same name.
Darlene writes from a faith-based perspective. She has been published in a variety of journals and online, most recently in a small Christian poetry journal, A Time of Singing.