From Birth to Love-Me-Nots

Another language swims under this one. Are you familiar?

Burning deadfall and stoking ash is a reminder that I am dust.
Robins pick through my powdered bones while mourning doves faintly call to one another in a nearby distance.

Spring is alert now. Crocus – daffodil – tulip.

Dawn kisses limp bed sheets as opal clouds sit on the edge of a horizon on fire. My moored shoes are pulled from beneath the bed. Today begins. I am the navigator of day, and I am waking.

I have no fear of dying but I do dread the granite tomb of winter. There is beauty in all of it and yet, whatever is my spine, breaks beneath the weight of January's austerity. This has all passed now.

Now is only unmade light.

*

But the world burns
with lethal righteousness
as we devour Mother Earth
and the petals of her children.

We have slipped time
forgetting we belong to each other
Our eyes looking away from orange
light over mountains

Bury yourself
in six feet of dirt
because there is no way
to get clean

Spring rain does fall
does waken daffodils and tulips
does fatten creeks and streams
does turn shriveled dead-fall to green

But the world still burns trying
to erase all the colors, praying to Death
and greed as our god
dying of a broken heart

*

We have forgotten how to love each other to life. Forgotten?

No.

Chosen.

*

I move about the land, readying the garden, collecting branches, turning compost. My cheeks begin to blush and burn, not used to this up-close light after so long. Soon the canopy will don their crowns, birdsong will pace dawn, and petals will turn from birth to love-me-nots.

Yet, the world burns. Its bridges collapse, leaving a million miles between my tulips and yours.

I am planting the difference between the breaking of heart and spirit.