Surrender Earth,
retreat into yourself,
for one summer to you is
a lifetime thick with passion
and light that drinks in all
it touches.
You've swelled with life too
long, so exhale scents both
sweet and sour,
joyous, perilous.
Death is just a new twist on life.
The first phase is on the wind:
cleansed of summer, winds have
voices like cellophane crystal
and ghost wings to stir up
rapture from emptiness
and lift real souls with it
because we are just spirits
borrowing earth and air and flesh.
Above, creatures in military
formation have better understanding:
a fearless arrow, slashing the air
and dissolving into a distant spring.
Below, forests speak with less wisdom;
yesterday they were flocks of well-fed
jade, now falling to their blazing dreams,
borrowed and returned like flesh.
Fire in the eyes and ice against skin--
so gloriously unnatural . . .
Enter this death,
romance it,
kiss the violence of change
without foreboding
-- as we should --
wear the wind like a veil and
let it dwell in your veins for
only a moment like water that
may soon be vapor or ice:
the universe unfinished,
just another drop of forever.