Psalm 1 “a tree replanted in Eden" The ripping of roots from soil, clods clinging, stones trembling, beetles burying themselves back in the earth's fallen dirt. The nakedness of limbs, roots, dangling in the light, in the open air, in the elements. The rush of rainwater against exposed bark, tendrils damp and then waterlogged in the terrifying freedom. The shock of new-yet- not-new place, its almost-familiar birdsong, its almost- familiar soil. The strange freedom in the fresh-tilled spot, for roots to sink down and spread out and drink up. The burgeoning urge to send out new green shoots, to bolster up the courage to bud, to blossom, to await the bees and sun and dew, and to swell and flourish into fruit.
Cynthia R. Wallace is Associate Professor of literature at St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, where she works at the intersections of gender, race, politics, ethics, and religion in contemporary women’s writing. She has published in Geez, Relief, Bearings Online, Radical Discipleship, the Ploughshares blog, and Sojourners, as well as scholarly journals. Her book Of Women Borne: A Literary Ethics of Suffering was published in 2016 by Columbia University Press.
Amethyst Review 