If you would comprehend the world at all,
imagine this: a place so pure and wild
it knows just spring, not summer yet, or fall.
Like a capricious, spoiled and errant child
it knows not between sacred and defiled,
but treats all things with equal joy and lust
until their centers start to rust.
Once wounded, everything betrays its core;
the earth, no different from a broken limb
that was fed by the tree, but is no more.
Inside the wound, there is no chance or whim;
just living and then death, which is not grim,
but time to put one book back on the shelf
and start another version of one’s self.
28 APR 2011
