THIRD MOVEMENT
SONG SEVENTEEN
BURNING GROUND
IV
When next I wake, I see the train is rolling through the City set in emerald hills
still floating in its lotus dreams and cut in half by its languid river
that once laid its moonbreast in my mouth and brought loved ones to my life
I feel and know at once that this place above all others can truly harness time
because we move in a light-speed circle around one other only
we outstrip the churning clock and fall turning and turning
into our own darkness alight
with the cold flame we need
the one endless fire in whose warmth we freeze
Still, I want to re-member that long exhale into fire
and the mist-formed shimmer that was my light
I am breathless once again even after all these years as if no time has passed
and I still hunger for that ghostly one’s retreating back
What is this place I struggle to reclaim?
Who is this one that I so ache to see again?
I struggle to re-shape the broken past
to re-member to see again
but I am a river of sand in a glass
that sifts all lovers the same – first to last
A hiss a glimmer a whisper I knew
but that time is over – a dream – an impossible place
The One disappearing into face after face
But still the desire to follow where I think pure love goes
staggering into that crevice of time between fire and snow
None too soon, I re-member the sound of the white owl’s wings
and the deafening song that the ice-stars sing
and I see the One alive in the moonlight
and the shimmering face I see is mine
without me there are no memories or dreams
without me nothing is what it seems
And so, willingly, I return to the pain
I conjure all the beloveds once again
I savor the losses honeyed and coiled in my mouth
I must feel this pain to know how to let it go
to reach the place where we all exist
where there is no difference in all beloveds kissed
I need this pain to lead me to ground that I must burn
to move closer and farther away
– rooted, choiceless empty of questions or quests
living voiceless like tangled roots, smokey and gray
I see again that fear is a matter of time
and no breathless space will stop its flow
No reckless speed to the next and the next
Of this I am certain. This I know
By now, I have learned that nothing comes
of giving way to grief, and in the end, grief and joy the same
in all the nations I have walked and named
And so, I choose to live without waiting
no more wrestling on the borders of death
I am in my time in my breath
free to go free free free
The horror of waiting is finished
The last sigh expelled as he begins to slip his skin
moving ever closer and farther away
now traveling out – no longer in
I lay my body’s length along the Tree
as other trees arch over him and me
With long slow strokes, I warm the dying trunk
With deepening cold, the fallen one lets go his light
Electric colored sparks flare up as the life unsheathes
Great sadness wells up and deepens grief
And when my body has nothing more to say
I leave him there and walk away
back to the place of the final strike
where the singular sound of the cracking tree
honed into my core – irrevocably changing me
And there in that place below the empty air
where the Tree had stood through time and bloomed
tiny ones of fur and claw already there
choosing the bits that fuel their lives
and carry on the One who had been here.
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