I was alone, made of rain & soil, twists in vine, to grow, to burrow roots, & draw from silt, truth & grace, & You bent toward me in a mile-wide sky with a soothing voice, hovered over the stacked vine, the pliant, supple stalks. The heavy air leaned on me. You docked the dead, the damaged, & diseased. You clipped & cropped, making the kindest cuts, as you pruned me under the luminous moon of early evening, the smell of broken vines & leaves, the discarded sprigs on the ground an offering. I paused in your work—breathed, observed, felt, moved toward holiness where I was grafted into you—this beautiful inheritance—a cluster of grapes of the Promise Land two men carried back to the desert as blessing, proof I can become imperfectly gentle, good as drops of water on turned dirt. & in time when the sky cracks with lightning, my stalks will hold rain again, & all the waiting & uncertainty will pale behind colors of life-bearing fruit, & I will swell & bloom again.