Meditations on Death

Part I
I pass through frozen woods at dusk.
A bitter wind molests my cheek.
Feet fall on a carpet of decay;
leaves--broken and brown.

I shift my wearied eyes to the heavens, to see
bare fingers clawing the shrouded sky.
Gnarled branches, warped in agony,
grasping wildly with brittle strength,
gnawing each other; gnawing themselves.

The trees no longer speak to me.
They used to sing, even
dance.
But now they rest,
impotent. Sterile.
They stand bare--empty faces to the world.

There is no song in the air.
There is only an echo,
a whisper of times long past;
of labor long lost.
There is no sound of warm nostalgic laughter,
only the weak exhales of dying breath.
Then nothing.

Death, I have found thy sting.
All is swallowed up in thee.
Of course they do not speak.
The echo of fond return finds no home in these woods.
The hollow trunks are a ruin--
a sepulcher of premonition.
The promise of sleep comes to all,
to preserve them in their wickedness.

This is The Song of Death in reverent tones,
hushed and ethereal,
like the whimper of a child deserted.
There is no hope in this place,
only dusk:
the reaping of the summer's fright,
the bitter fall of wretched night.

Part II
A trumpet call in the dark,
a single note, pure and resolute.
Waves stretching across the arid plane;
rhythm vibrating in the festering rot.

The waves meet the trees
who had given themselves to death.
A mournful state,
their sacrifice of life; the toll of Artistry.
They are left shriveled and grotesque,
brush and seeds on cold, stiff ground.

But only the fool loses hope
at the sight of the bare kernel.
At the very moment the trumpet's call touches the seeds,
the horizon erupts
and sets the world ablaze.
A burning Sun rising in the hands of the anointed.
The death that clung to all
now peels away in light.
The warmth touches the seeds,
and they
BURST.

Shoots sprout in beds of decay.
The Sun is eternal,
it has swallowed up Death's victory,
sharing its immortality with the earth.
The Sun is eternal, therefore
so too is the soil.
Barren dirt dons the aureate immortality
of celestial glory.
Death is swallowed up in the seraphic dawn:
Salvific rays fall from above,
the world finds life again in love.

The Artistry of Trees

His little fingers tighten on the branch,
The skin begins to stretch, the knuckles blanch.
His little legs grab hold their perch of brown,
His arms descend; Behold the earth his crown!
The tree, his throne, was made for his delight,
An edifice of childhood rite.

Eternal, though, this arb'rous post was not.
As once botanic ovum met this spot.
Shot forth its arms to grasp its destiny
Escaping danger in the care of Thee,
Up toward the Vault its mass began to fight.
The precipice of nature's might.

An undertaking vast she now begins
And ventures now to shed her suckling skins.
Voracious roots the fertile ground espouse;
The leafy lattices in sun carouse.
Her sap now grows robust with grace alight,
The swelling of her mystic sight.

No gravid spring or thriving summer throng,
Our Tree now primes to sing autumnal song. 
In fiery gold she sets her passions free
and groans to paint her masterpiece for Thee. 
Of her whole self she will in fire write. 
A mood supernal doth excite.

Seraphic fire clinging to the tree
Eventually must yield to gravity. 
It robes the earth until, by wind and feet,
the art is marred and perverse meanings mete.
Her art no longer hers; the soul benight. 
Expire, O Tree, in beauty dight.

Her life, it seems, became the awe-full fee,
She spends herself to give her Poetry.
But don't forget that snow clothes sleep, not blight.
O dawn! The wistful hope of night.