Good Friday: Keep your eye on the far horizon

A poem by Edward Hirsch for Good Friday . . .

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Green Figs
By Edward Hirsch

I want to live like that little fig tree

that sprouted up at the beach last spring

and spread its leaves over the sandy rock.

All summer its stubborn green fruit

(tiny flowers covered with a soft skin)

ripened and grew in the bright salt spray.

The Tree of the Knowledge of Good

and Evil was a fig tree, or so it is said,

but this wild figure was a wanton stray.

I need to live like that crooked tree—

solitary, bittersweet, and utterly free—

that knelt down in the hardest winds

but could not be blasted away.

It kept its eye on the far horizon

and brought honey out of the rock.