I had the pleasure of attending a friend’s wedding this weekend. It was a black tie affair. We were dressed to the nine’s. Rhinestones sparkled and black silk shone. Glasses clinked and the sound of knives hitting China punctuated the conversations of new acquaintances.

The irony was not lost on me then, when (during the ceremony) the officiant read this poem by Wendell Berry….

 

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
Hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it. There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark. It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over. It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and radiance of its dark face.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

~Wendell Berry

 

The officiant went on to relate that Sycamore to a marriage. That within such a creature, no perfection is attained, but rather imperfection weathered.

While I understood his metaphor, and appreciated it’s sentiment, I couldn’t help but think of every person in that room as their own separate Sycamore:
Dressed up
and disguising
the places where our barks were burned,
where the fences were, and are no more,
jewels masking the places that nails once drove in,
and the peace that comes when you hear, and hear again, the line,

“it has gathered all accidents into its purpose.”

 

we grow
we scar
we grow again
and stronger
deeper in root
and wrinkled in face
and bearing sweeter fruit thereon.

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