This is another-- this is a reference to that story where
Jesus went up to the fig tree, expecting to find figs.
And finding nothing there, cursed the fig tree.
I know some scholars would say, "Well, being the Son of God,
wouldn't he have known that it wasn't the season for figs?"
[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]
But still the story has become a kind of very popular metaphor
for a certain type of withered soul.
"On a Winter's Night."
"It's the cursed fig tree, backlit, a bitter halo
in the distant light.
Though I don't know how it came here, transplanted,
still out of season, surviving amputee of God's will.
The man who climbed into a fig tree
to glimpse Christ in the crowd was blessed,
but the barren tree was blasted, lopped off
by a word from Christ, to forever signify
all fruitless souls.
A trope of useless love, it grips now a plain hill
in the southwestern desert.
And what I see is how it thrives, as love does,
stubborn beyond the pointing finger,
beyond the uttered curse.
For while its limbs are but stubs, it's dense with life.
So many new sprouts sporting out of its trunk and roots,
it rises within the thicket of its own persistent self."