The Woodland Apothecary

By Diane Duckworth

The Contradiction

In a land of cross and flag

Where prophets speak through cable news

There grows a garden of contradictions

Loud as trumpets, quiet as graves

Here, the unborn child is named a miracle

Yet the doctor is called an enemy

Where life is sacred in the womb

And strangely cheaper once they breathe

Here, salvation is skyward

Stored in the promises of second comings

The kingdom is always elsewhere

Never in rivers,

Or forests,

Or the trembling hands of the suffering

And the Christ they claim to follow

The barefoot healer in ragged clothes

Watches, as His name is welded into guns and steel

Sharpened into slogans, used as a locked gate

Rather than a welcome

For if dominion means ownership

And not stewardship

Then wolves and sparrows become

Afterthoughts

Mountains an obstacle

Oceans a resource

Earth just a scaffolding for the next world

And in the palace of golden fixtures

A ruler is praised not for his kindness

But for his cruelty

As though thunder were a virtue

And mercy was a weakness to be mocked

Yet outside the headlines

The wind still sighs through the trees

The crow still cries to the sunrise

The deer still move like whispered prayers

Through the understory of a world worth saving

And somewhere, quiet, untelevised

A different kind of faith takes root

One that sees the sacred in soil and breath

In children and refugees

In strangers and species

In everything that grows and grieves

The kind of faith that knows

Heaven is not a prize to escape to

But a responsibility blooming underfoot