---
Her passing stains
the forest bed.The wood quivers;
quivers and wilts at the sound of her step.
Flowers retreat into
their shells of cupped leaves (leaves like little tender hands; the
hands of a mother holding her first wailing child, yet unaware of the
mirthless mortality that comes with a step into the glass-blown hut)
and moles dive
under, hiding beneath warm sod; finding strange bedfellows in the
crawling things of earth.
She weeps, but the
sound fades into the ways of the world and joins the clear waters;
becomes the song of life:
The whispers of
reeds
The groans of
the earth
The laughter of
willows
All dance and
sing in a harmony led by the illiterate farmer and crouching hunter:
by men who never felt the first raindrop (or remembered the first
acorn and the bending of the seas!) or swam in laughter beside the
swift rushes.
Men who are not the
first to laugh and cry and search; men who do not know that life is
but a path that dwindles and narrows and joins the road that does not
end but continues ever on beyond sight; beyond reason and closure and heartache.
No sound makes she,
and poppies, somber and still, spring forth with each drop of crimson
that slips from the soles of her feet.
A carpet, long and
dark, trails after her; winding itself through the steps of mist and
time: Poppies billow in the air, until fire destroys both earth and
sky and the infantile darkness;
Until all is
made anew:
Clean; Clean and vulnerable, once more.
---