Samsara
i
Roiling coiling boiling
beyond memory dreams
phase and shift in amniotic mists
swirl in the silence of pulsation
swim in the stillness of song and dance
Slowly gently gradually
sensations coalesce illuminating
shapes only somewhat guessed before
till time takes hold and presses
long hard strained contractions
bearing breath into the light
where lungs expel a fluid reverie
and struggle with thin arid vapors of life
Now spry pink fingers fan out
new translucent maple leaves
that ball and bob and grasp
at each candescent moment
each ray of raw potential
emerging from the void
ii
Ailing paling failing
beyond hope of recall
yesteryears evaporate like mists
drift in and out of apprehension
drone in the absence of conscious thought
Fiercely surely naturally
perception dissipates into a darkness
shapes only somewhat recognized
as time slows down and shuffles
somber strained abstractions
toward an ever shifting shade
where lungs expand in fluid misery
and struggle at each dim sensation of life
Here sun browned fingers curl up
frail exhausted walnut leaves
that twist and creak and claw
at brief pellucid moments
at dreams of lost potential
returning to the void
iii
An old oak grows on the side of a hill,
the side that faces the afternoon sun;
on the ground in the grass, her litterfall
has collected around her ancient trunk,
its bottommost layers turned back to soil.
A short distance away the blanched remains
of a sister lies rotting in the grass,
her wood resculpted by late autumn rains
and frosts that covered her corpse with a glass
that deepened the wedges along the grain.
The old oak rises, the last of her kin;
her trunk is split and a third of her limbs
in perpetual winter scrape like bone
the progression of ever changing climes—
the blistering azure, the thunder’s groan.
In the shape of a crescent moon, decay
has collected around her knobby base,
the twigs and branches that once would display
a green that shimmered now turning to waste
where skeletal shadows reach out and pray.
Another third is beginning to wane,
the crown has turned to a light mottled shade
and the leaves have begun to curl and thin
where, before, a reflective glimmer played
like fairy folk dancing within the sun.
She is old; she was old when condors soared
in the skies that revolve above her leaves;
for centuries she has weathered the storms
that lumber in from the watery weaves
which pattern the sandscapes of distant shores.
Her time is near, as it nears for us all;
the vibrancy of her youth has been lost
to the powerful change that claims us all,
yet she faces the end and bears the worst
with a grace that exists within us all.
