It is the quintessence of unbelonging
To be surrounded without means of connection
Mute in the words of communication

To have forgotten
How to look
How even to love
To catch only
A glimpse
A passing touch

All this belonging to people business
Makes for lonely days
And restless

All this owning, too

Maybe earth owns me
Not the other way around
Maybe belonging to place
Requires surrender
And the grasping at control
Takes too high a cost

Trust cannot breathe there

Trust not of earth to me
But me to earth
To dirt and seed
To water
Both earth-bound and sky-fed

Yes, loved ones
Tender ones
It hurts in my heart also
That pricking vine that holds us apart
Holds us all
Grips us because we are all together numb
And must remain numb
To subsist as we do

Oh the unbearable
The anguish it will take
To bind us together 
Harmoniously
Requires more of us
Than we know yet how to give

So do not tell me
Do not tell you
Not to feel so much
But let us weep
Until we cry out a new way to Life
Older than the mountains themselves
And in those tears, too
The courage to birth it
To bear it

Child, how long
How long will you dig there?
How long, in search of water
Scratching at dirt and stone?
It lives not where your hands alone
Can reach

It needs one hundred others beside you
One thousand others to sing for you
And ten thousand to breathe with you
And the four winds across your back
The voices of birds
The seeds of grass
Even the yielding of the roots
And the rocks
To bring forth that wellspring

If it is lonely work
It is because it was not meant
To be taken
Alone

           Spin for me again your spell
    Only let it be of spider’s silk this time
                       Strong but soft
                        
                            Beautiful
                         
                             Endless

     Let it encompass my many wounds
                       In its embrace
                     But never strain
           And yield to my many faces
                      As to the wind
                     But never break
                   And let it hold me
                       
                           Hold me

                           Hold me

                  Always, but always
                            Lightly 
                          Knowing 
                      Wherever I go
                        I carry you
                          With me

                           Always

I do not shrink 

In fear of inadequacy 

No. It is that I am other 

And my energies consumed 

And there is no weightless 

Or ease for me 
 

Who could think

I can belong there

And be wished for

In bright places so full of light

And vitality
 

Do I not better subsist

In solitude and closed in silence

Where my bound existence can be

Without having to be seen

And where no one will mind
 

How should I know

If when I let that frail wing 

From beneath the shell

If it will catch the wind

And how long it will carry me?

Let them wail

Let them mourn

Whether the broken leg

Of a favorite toy

Or bedtime

Or the fawn at the side of the road

Let them cry

Open mouthed

Loudly

At the library closed

At the change of plans

At the tongue-stuck-out of their brother

Teach them

To turn toward

Lean in

Let them feel

And do not distract them

From the fading light

The closing book

The felled tree

Let them learn to carry 

Great and small sorrows

They will need it

To walk in this world

So new

And I knew

More wonders.

Wisdom.

                           WHEN

I was younger then,

Older than I am now,

Now that they've untaught me

Those truths.

                            WE

Pain,

The tonic

To unlearn lies,

Theirs and mine.

                            DARE

I have outgrown

This place

And long

For a smaller one.

One that feels

Like home.

                            WAKE

Soon I will be

As ancient as the day

I was born.

I bathed in that rare morning sun, cleansing myself for the ritual, drawing the sweat from my body that would open the pores of the hard ground.

Just as my brow began to shine, he appeared before me, his shadow interrupting the light. He looked at my uncovered skin. He looked at the trees.

"They will take you a lifetime, and you will pass into nothing before they are done with their growing."
He said he could give me a magic quicker and more brilliant.

He moved so easily, effortlessly, carelessly. He showed his white teeth and swung his arm and the seeds flew and dived in obedience. But they did not grow. They buried themselves and waited.

"How long does it take?" I asked.

"That depends on you," he said, and he leaned to me and kissed me. When I did not move, he bit. And I did not know I cried or bled until he had gathered my tears and blood into his sowing hand and thrown them out with that same easy toss.

Only then did the seeds begin their birthing, pushing out their inner lives, ravenously grabbing for the sun at a rate that made my heart stutter. From the confusion of the twisting and reaching, flowers hurried out. Some came so fast they bent their immature stems to the ground until the growth caught them up and pushed them into salute.

"Any magic worth your time will cost you,” he said.

I licked the blood from my lip; I couldn't taste it for the scent of the flowers.

                                                               ---

Every day they cried out for more, as if yesterday and the yesterdays before that had never been. Never enough. Not even everything I could give.

The day I refused my tribute of blood and tears he left, and the garden began to show signs of fading. It was soft at first, and lent a strange, ghostly beauty to what had once been robust, ravenous life; the leaves began to appear translucent, the thorns thinner and sharper, the colors strangely lush against the creeping pale.

Was I fading, too, my life-force tied to this place? I drew just the smallest blood from my finger at the tip of a thorn. A momentary flush took the rose as it drank this last offering. I held my hand up to the gaze of the sun and found strong flesh, with none of the translucence of the leaves. Alive then, in body.

Alive.

And lifeless.

It all bled away with each sunrise and sunset, slowly, subtly, without awareness. Only my unmoving eye, trained on it every waking hour, could perceive it, until it began showing crude signs of decay. Leaves and petals suddenly gave their will to gravity. Whiteness took the stems of every plant, starting from the earth and reaching upwards against the deep green that still fought the waning. The scent turned from its heady play, until it became indistinguishable from rot.

The rain assaulted the dying things, and the sun burned them.

Then there remained only the chaos of the blank stems and cracking leaves, pointing up at the heat of the day in many-fingered accusations. The roots showed, running through and into each other, escaping into the receding ground, which cracked and gaped and received them still.

Heavy rain flooded their corpses, and the desiccated ground, unable to drink, released its last hold and let the water carry them furiously into another world.

Here was brown earth again now, blank, smooth, hard. She had sealed herself, almost as she had been before that strange beauty she and I had so briefly thrust into being. I stood at the rim of the clear-swept ground. Cleaned by the rain, by the wind, by the sun.

Empty.

She had found her old shape, but I felt the change; I felt her tiredness. It echoed in the deep weariness which sat now in my bones.

I cannot be otherwise, I whispered.

Then be, she whispered back.

Be.
Existing alone as a breath, filling myself empty, without thought, without feeling, without even pain.

Pain is life-force.

Pain weaves us into Life’s fabric.

Life… no. No time for that now. Time to close in and sit with the stillness of death.

I slept through uncounted days. I woke in the nights and sat in the shadows. When I began to feel my heart beat again, I sat in the moonlight. When the warmth returned to my breath, I woke in sunlight and sat in the shade. When I began to shed tears, I sat in full sun and my whole body wept.

                                                                   ---

I felt the call of the sun while it was still dark. It pierced my heart and I knew: the sky would bleed today.

There was none of the blue early light. It was red from the moment it began to overtake the darkness. It grew and pressed forward, eating the black sky until it ran with color.

I heard the heat before it broke through, as it thrummed behind the mountains and then spilled over and caught me full-face. My heart knew the call. Its movement drew me upwards, and my body unfurled in the light. As the sweat rose in me, I bowed again and kissed the ground and poured it forth. From my brow, from my back. From my arms and legs and chest.

I gave and the earth swallowed away her parched living. She became black and fine and soft. Loamy and rich and ripe.

I gave and she was satisfied.

I gave and did not run dry.

Except that the sun will rise

Over clear skies

Over cloudy skies

The sun will rise

When you are there to see it

It will rise

When no one is there at all

There is no promise of tomorrow

No dreams

No reality

But that it will be a new day

That the sun will rise

And I will love you