The Dream of the Rood

after the 10th century C.E. Vercelli Book

Standing at the edge of the grove, 
among blue ash and black oak, 
I saw the men coming 
and wanted to take up my roots.  
The ax whittled bark and flesh 
and I fell toward them.  The work was hard, 
criminals a paltry lot, sweating and groaning 
all the way up the hill,
and after uttering their death cry, 
the lowly rattle of their bone box.  
When the One Man laid his arm 
along my crossbar, when he embraced me
like a bridegroom, I dared not droop 
or bend.  The spiked nails burrowed 
through us and we did not fall.  
It is true the earth trembled.
My sap turned red as blood.  It seeped 
through the holes of spear shafts 
and knots where stems once grew.
Night came, and the cloud gloom thickened.
They took us down and put us 
apart in the earth.  For Him 
the stone rolled away and He rose up, new.
I waited among worms and rootstalk.
After four hundred years St. Helena found me
in the dark earth.  Pulled up into day,
gold and silver were hung 
from my trunk, gemstones set about me.  
Angels spun till they were blurs of light, 
their wings droning.  There I swayed 
between gilded and bloodied
between glory and sorrow.  I do not mind 
the parings and carvings, relics 
enough to fill a ship's hold,
for my form will never lessen.
I do not need a dreamer to speak for me.  
Put your ear to the trunk of any tree, and listen.



 

© Jan Lee Ande