Photo Prayer: Donna Violante

A Lenten prayer in poetry honoring the beautiful palm, whose branches were waved by the crowd singing Hosanna, " Save us,” proclaiming the kingdom of God.

“For God So Loved the Weald”

By Diana Butler Bass

Eccentric tree,

lofty, lithe from spiny copse:

nearly shadeless rod

with razor fronds—

misfit wood.

Yet you alone from the stands of arboreal majesty

surrendered stalks

for fervid peasants waving hosanna

and carpeting grace.

Susurrating above the throng,

did you assist their supplication?

Did you bow in the breeze

as One rode by?

Perhaps that fleeting genuflect redeemed the weald,

for, unlike your kin whose more mundane timber gave

stake and beam,

you gifted glory.