The Confidence of Manna

Leaves on steps.
Dead ones, wet with melted frost,
a bit of their color still left,
slick, dangerous, and beautiful.
Live ones. Ivy green.
A bit invasive, like a love
that will not leave your mind.
The steps are brick. Less red
than dark and dirty and worn.
Moss fills in the cracks.

These are the back steps,
rarely used. Rarely seen.
So art-like, you do not want to walk on them,
do not want to disturb its unseen beauty.

But in the end, you do.
There are places to go,
places to rise to,
and at times, you are too sentimental
for your own good.
And so you step. Crush the leaves,
leave footprints in the accumulated dirt, confident
God will arrange the world for beauty
again and always again.

About this poem

I believe in a God of Second (and third and fourth and) Chances. I have been granted more than my share of those extra chances. Also about steps and how nature reclaims its beauty no matter how often we mess it up. Poetry is rarely about one thing.

If you are unfamiliar with Manna, it was a bread-like substance that God provided, fresh each day, as the Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years. Always just enough. Always replenished. It is a powerful image in my own life and experience. You can read the whole story in Exodus 16.

The photograph was taken in the back of The Hyde Collection Museum in Glens Falls, NY. No one ever goes there.