Once again
the dogwoods are
preparing for my
birth.
You walk like royalty
through the
great hall
of maples, dogwoods, oaks,
but return a pilgrim
with God in
your arms,
and surrounded by
holiness in the
shape of polished frogs
and larks on
the path to
sainthood,
and some leaves
shape-shifting with
sprays of a new day,
dissolving so many,
too many thoughts,
the sun creating one
sleek, liquid voice
above the chaos.
Shadows are spilling their
versions of light,
when a lovely lady
steps out of
the portal:
a doe from the other side of
our world.
With the bottomless
peace that is darkness
staring back at me,
she ascends time
and gazes into my
dizzying world:
flickers of care,
bizarre ambition,
hard-won, paper love,
the way humans snatched
a planet meant for one
teeming soul,
sliced it into the few
and the billions,
us and all the others,
forgetting everything we
once knew about forever
in this red daze
we pass off
as a life.
Then I enter her
untamed story:
such primitive luxury,
galas of softness,
unforced joy.
She is the freedom that we are,
we've just forgotten
for a moment,
for one screaming sprint
from birth to death,