I won’t be nourished
by the glittering parade
of the soon-to-be-forgotten.
Rivers run white
in the first storms of November,
mountains ring with the sound
of water rushing to the sea.
Let me go down with leaves,
choose the submersion of rock
in the autumn flood.
Let me rise in darkness,
be fed by morning silence
and choose each day to say yes.

Looking to the east
nothing takes shape
in the grey sky,
light slowly rising
on the undefined.
Before the made
there is the void,
the emptiness
of what may be,
the womb of earth
awaiting seed
for the days ahead.
We rest without knowing
while the wheel of time
slowly turns our fate
dark bruised and wailing,
bright born to the morning.

Encaustic painting by Eilish Hynes

What coils out from within,
dark and inscrutable,
with no regard for all we’ve made,
how we reach to each other in the night.
One of the old gods, cruel and unyielding,
the arm of the destroyer
lifted against our tenderest mercy.
Once the void is opened, the venom released,
there’s no going backward, no pretense
that what we’ve seen is not us.
The shaman rattles slowly,
the seeds within his gourd
beating time against the hollow sphere,
against our fearful thoughts,
reminding us to keep time
with another heartbeat,
absorb the poison
and within us change again
to who we are, hand in hand,
smiling at the beast
as we slowly re-emerge
into the light.

Bordering the sea
mountains fold
in rounded loaves
to lay their feet
in the great stone bowl.
As the sea empties
with the pull of the tide
my thoughts follow
the receding water,
freeing up the deadwood
to sip upon the empty cup.
Ten thousand years pass;
salt air etches the stone,
grass rises with the courage of a lion
and I cast off, weightless
into the void of peace.