Aneladisdi

 We’ve come to the end of the garden now,
to the five o’clock shadow of the surrounding
forest. We grew and prospered here, bowing
to the moonlight against the lodge’s muddy
chest, its rooted skin breathing metronome
seconds beneath a caked dome of ribs;
this come-what-may equanimity of spiritual
practice perfected our being into what is.

Pumpkin blossoms shrivel against a broken
trellis where we tarry this physical disunion.
Iron oxide hennas my fingers; I am encouraged
to hold the rusted body to my nostrils
and breathe in the metallic fragrance
of its lifelong pilgrimage now stamping
vapor trails across its finale. There’s such an
intimate connection we hold with disintegration,
an avatar between conception and deliverance
foraging from millennia-spanning coinages
attempting to describe our feral existence.

Standing at the end of this fenceless place of
growth that will soon separate us into distance,
our verses, written from the purest of experiences
will burgeon into harvests, fruits of knowledge
beguiling those who seek unto this holy ground
of learning, of coming and growing and going
forth to create all they know and are as humans
that others who follow will recognize the route.
Listen, I could go on into the early morning
but words don't exist for this internal feeling;

With all seedlings reaped between our emptied pens,
Let us whisper nothing of this aneladisdi but ‘Amen’.
~