Tokens of Awakening

I Am Earth by unknown artist

On this spring evening I am in my garden,

Remembering spring in that other garden

            that used to be mine.

Did I think it would last forever,

All the time that was, once upon a time?

I know it no longer exists for me.

I know Someone has replaced me.

But do I stop existing… simply so?

That soil bears tokens of my onetime presence,

Fallen hairs and nail clippings and

Champagne corks and lost buttons.

It is not by Serendipity’s Hand that

            these tokens are there,

But by the purposeful action of my hands,

And this while I contemplated the open sky

Of a single season that was Summer

And Autumn and Winter and Spring.

I opened up the earth for tender roots –

            Lemon and Daffodil and Lavender and Rose.

I opened up the earth for these, My Tokens.

I was Mistress, Master, Creator Without Rival.

I opened up the earth and the earth I opened

            no longer had a past.

And I know... ten years from now, someone

Will pick a lemon from this tree. Someone...

Or Someone Else… Someone That Matters…

Or Someone That Does Not Matter.

The trees and the flowers will survive my absence.

They have, already.

They have grown, and they have changed –

            placed in the earth by my hands,

            now firmly rooted in the ground.

And I am where I am.

I thought I knew myself, back then.

I thought I knew that image

            reflected in my glass door.

And the bushes and the flowers

And the grass and the sky –

            I thought I knew them, too.

I pretended I was setting

            each monument –

            each moment –

                       in stone.

But even stone erodes and crumbles

And becomes the old within the new.

i may blindfold the bushes

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the flowers

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the grasses

            but they will still find me

i may blindfold the skies

            but they will still find me

Is it my agitation that gives me away?

My delirious air of insecurity?

The devotion in my clamoring eyes?

The beating of my persistent heart?

Is it my cry, stifled and scarred?

Is it my ghost, silent and serene?

Move aside, she whispers quietly, My Ghost.

Move that I may see you better.

We have beautiful hands that with their beauty

Birth beauty in Beauty’s Womb.

I stand in the presence of thoughts

            filled with other meanings.

And I smile – because it is good to smile.

The soft and balmy air of dusk kisses my face

And tells me it comes for me –

            among all others it comes for Me.

And the labyrinthine smell of the breeze tells me

That the hour when I am most alone is at hand.

Can I encapsulate this moment

            in words?

            in feelings?

            in blossoms?

Can I describe it

            to Someone?

            to My Self?

            to My Ghost?

Shall I go inside, now?

But to linger with Earth... 
                                       is so divine.

I am neither refreshed, nor dampened,

            But rather, awakened,

By this Awakening.