Nature Speaks Through Her Creatures

Nature Speaks Through Her Creatures
- especially the birds

Life Owes Us a dying;
if we're lucky, many deaths:
I sacrifice creatures to my table,
the warm blooded, the cold blooded, the chlorophylled.

Personal extinction, though,
that's so hard to bear;
it's easier to believe in the hereafter,
than to fully accept you'll be gone.

No mourning widow, sorrowful children
or even idol-worshiping followers
can ever change your fate
or do more than honor your existence.

The greatest minds of Earth have floundered
on just the gateway to death's door,
yet faith alone points in many given directions:
is it enough to stay on a path with honor and heart?

Interrupted by the rich lushness of early Spring,
atop a bank on my creek, over lonely flood dunes:
life speaks out her joyous serenade on winged notes;
these moments of the eternal are chased butterflies.

The wonder that started me on this muse:
the death for me of all I consume,
the death for 'something else' when I am consumed;
is solaced by honey-sound on birds' tongues.

Be silent, Tantalus, drink your fill, no drop to savor;
heartily eat your to health, and ever void your being;
for gazing at the feast eternal and not partaking,
keeps you at the table while we must relish a briefer feast.

LMC 4 April 1999 & 19 August 1999