probablehuman

I. The Sprout

Darkness, cold and wet,

comfortable and familiar,

alone but unaware,

something new, eternal,

warm, without precedent,

a touch of light,

I want more,

warmth from above,

if I can reach I can touch,

it reaches down,

through all that distance,

touches me,

flows to the dark places I’ve forgotten,

must reach,

can’t reach,

won’t resist,

toward something I haven’t seen,

opened toward a thing without end,

impossible,

closing now,

a fall, sideways,

failure resting on failure,

their weight on me,

my weight on them,

another stretch,

higher than alone

II. The River

I flow,

away from the heights,

behind me as always, releasing me,

toward the valley, pulling from below,

to the place I will cease to be what I am,

I am the flow,

debris collects, a wall is formed,

I rise and fill,

peaceful lake I was made to be,

I forget the valley,

or the roots that stretched and found no friend,

the sprouts that stopped reaching,

that lie in dust and reach no more,

I can’t grieve what I can’t see,

if I could stand in the valley,

touch the roots one more time,

feel the loss my absence caused,

I would not stay still,

I am the flow

III. The Fruit

I am wise, to stay above the reach of animals who pick and tear my flesh and leave me gutted on the ground;

to watch from high where I can’t be touched, the beauty all around, I watch the young ones play, flowers open their colorful array, a river glistening and bringing life.

others fall to waiting hands, taken into young bodies, gathered, eaten, gone;

not me, not yet, not ever;

others fell before their time, I watched the seeds sink into dirt, cut off from light and warmth;

now I am old, held by the branch out of habit, the young that ate the lower fruit, looks at its face in a still pool of water, diverted from the flow;

moves with old friends in its blood, to places I cannot see,

the early ones lie in rest;

perhaps to sprout one day, creating a new tree to outlast my tired branch.

I was beautiful, my moment was real, but the ones I watched disappear and thought: not me;

they live in a way I do not, I’m glad they survived, I now wish it were me.

IV. The Tree

A tree shaped through seasons with no shelter,

wears the weight of every storm in her limbs.

Relentless winds have carved a story;

she breaks them still for the life beneath,

the sturdy and the tender alike.

Two streams flow from distant places,

carrying torn branches from old wounds.

Beneath the canopy they wander,

their currents shaped by slope and stone,

drawn into deeper waters

on their way to some unknown sea.

She sees only the weathered bark,

the fallen nest,

feathers scattered in the mud

near the hollow where the fox decays.

Yet sunlight shimmers on the water,

fallen petals scent the air,

her branches curve against the sunrise,

her leaves hum in the wind

as the saplings stretch toward the light.