Long ago

There was a bird who sang but just once in her life

From the moment she left the nest

She searched the longest leaf for a thorn tree

Never resting until she found one

Then she began to sing

More sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth

But carry away in the rapturous honor song

She impaled herself on the longest sharpest thorn

As she was dying

She rose above her own agony to out- sing

Even the lark and the nightingale

The thorn bird traded her life for that one song and

The whole world was captured to listen

And God in his heaven smiles

As her very best was brought out

Only of the cost of great pain

Driven by the thorn with no fear for her death to come

But when we push the thorn into our breast

We know

We understand

And still we choose the pain of the thorn