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Spirit

Spirit

Abstract painting in sahdes of red, orange, purple, and yellow.
Shall I follow you down by the river under the leaf-full trees,
Or into the hidden garden past the jumbled rock homes of snakes,
Through the briar hedges that cling and claw and clutch my arms?
And all the while I wonder where you take me, and will you break me
Like the helpless ocean that crashes on the barren, sandy shore?
I am the water that takes its shape from everything that touches me,
The vulnerable body upon whom the world may make its mark
Which dissipates in the cracks and crevices of rock on which I flow.
You think me weak because I choose surrender
Yet yielding is in itself the greater strength:
I wait, I scheme, I bide my solitary time.
In loneliness.
Still you persist in pursuing me
Intruding on my dreams like an enduring worm of hunger
Whose appetite consumes each stray and sleeping thought
Until I wake in a nightmare dark of frightful chittering
From which I flee while peaceful dawn flows through the window.
Will nothing ever change? The seasons remain fixed in their place,
The clock cannot grow more numbers to mark its standard hours,
Day and night, dawn and dusk, all keep their time in combat unison.
So must I struggle to remember to forget you
To forget to remember you as I trail your shadow and cry:
“Through death you have abandoned me” but still I feel
The tendrils of your embrace that pull me closer.