Falling
Carpet of gold laced red and green
Autumn in glorious death throes
Each leaf a perfect single self.
Head down, muscles locking stiffness
Barely walking and heart weary
I admire the lovely demise
The forms and colours of dying
The specificness of each leaf.
All the while I am winter bound
Dreaming snow drifts of the future
Of a world remade and pristine
Where you might lay down a body
Too wounded to walk any more
Imagine the feather softness
Where cold becomes the sweetest warmth
Pain becomes melting glad release.
To be wrapped in beauty at last
Held to mother nature’s bosom
In a longed for desperate embrace.
When she holds as snow, as river
As earth or grave or fire or flood
She never lets you go again.
Rain held my body, long and chill
The cold of it held me tightly
Somehow today I am alive
Pen in hand, limbs aching, heart sore.
Not a leaf to end in glory
This is the dying time of year
And it is hard to want to live.
(Before anyone worries too much about this, I’m still here, I survived the weekend, I am coming back along a hard road with notes. It seemed important to record what I could of the territory.)