A Handful of Earth

So. The crunch of bones in a coyote's mouth
is where this carrier of experiences goes,
and those experiences : wind, cobwebs,
Hidden reminisces in someone else's dreams,
Corner space in the basements. Well.
That's kind of humbling. The humus from rotting leaves,
a handful of peat, some lime. Wings and tails,
ears, fur, claws and nails, noses, gills,
the whole apparati, every one, melts
in the compost's unseen flames, underground
microbes : all deliquesce into soft cradles
for flies' beloved young : tomb-wombs
for soon-to-be-winged things ; the fart
of belly burst, the last bloating ; moths nested in hair,
with beetles ; finally, earth, earth, root-nourishings,
ever-presence in the soil ; that clay manikin
washed away by rain at last : the last remnants,
mocking poppet, gone. The buried jawbone
kissing the clay. All elements in dispersal,
osmosis, seeping -- filaments stretched thread
to furthest heavens, tethered bedrock to
the cosmos' fulcrum : webbed, wide-webbed,
sap of the tree, sweet inner taste of mead in cellars,
rest in the place of dwarves, silent drone
in the ancestors' halls with hollow sound of wind,
ancient sunlight splashed against heathstalk.
Between the interstices of fear, the peace lodged
in the rented loft of acceptance and reverie.
There the dead sleep, peaceful amidst us,
the carrier long gone. A handful of earth.




This is not denying afterliving (in fact, in a profound sense, life is but preliving, a gathering of material for a grand masterpiecing), but attempts to depict the dreamlike reverie of aftering as it overseers the likeness's return to the holy earth, afterbody experience having a more dreamlike quality : evanescent shimmering.