The Palm of Madagascar

The Palm of Madagascar won first place in the FaithWriters weekly writing challenge.  I get to move up a level --a writer high akin to playing video games.

Once in every hundred years
a Madagascar palm tree blooms
the sweetness of its flower spears
toward heaven and as quickly dooms
the nascent blossom full of life
dazzling in the summer sun
to lose its strength in deathly strife
and so its days on earth are done.

Just so are we allotted time
in which our bloom is but a flash
illuminating skies sublime
then cooling in a bed of ash.
In days of old were men endowed
with children over centuries
and yet it seems time disallowed
their progeny their God to please.

Though man may age ten times tenfold
Or seventy times seven years
It matters not how young or old
man’s worth exceeds his greatest fears
if love is borne like tiny seed
to nourish life afar and wide
the gift is in the loving deed
the wounded hands and feet and side.

By this we know that we abide.

1 John 4:12 & 13