By faith the walls of Jericho fell down as the horns sounded
____

God help humanity if anything comes upon us more difficult than navigating the space between a father and a son. This was true for me and mine; many a ship was lost in those churning waters when tossed upon the craggy rocks defining our shores.

It wasn’t always so contentious, but those days have gone. Overtures of reconciliation were still made, though with less frequency as if part of some dying breed.

Today we meet, a year since the last time my father’s gaze fell upon me. Talk would come slowly and only trickle when it was there at all. We’d bring our barriers; built to repel the outside and isolate that which lay inside.

There’d be no olive branch today; I’d left mine at home and such a thing had never sat right in his grasp.

We shook hands and sat. I kept a closed mouth waiting for him to move the first pawn of our chess match.

“Son, I was wrong.
I was wrong for so long.”

There was no olive branch today.
He had brought a tree.