I.
Inside me
there is a wild and rolling forest
with trees of all kinds braiding together their roots
and intertwining their branches.
Happiness abounds within my breast,
scurrying across countless moss bathed stones
and filling the leafy base of my being
with sounds of life unfolding, of life unwinding
petal by petal, exposing
all that is sweet nectar
for all to drink and be nourished by.
Outside of me,
there is also a wild and rolling forest—
it is called Humanity.
I am a stranger in this land,
though my face appears
so clear
on the dark surfaces of its rivers and lakes.
But this Humanity,
despite its familiarity,
is cold.
The easy mist of my lungs
within moments
freezes to ice and plummets
with the sharp icicles dangling
on the sapless branches
of Humanity’s trees.
Leafless, skeletal,
the gnarled fingers
are pierced through by the rays
of a spiteful Sun.
What has happened to Humanity,
I wonder to myself
each moon’s turn.
My mind cycles,
first a saintly compassion
then a righteous disdain…
Just look at the mountains!
Once proud and noble aspirations
lying buried, obscured by frost,
inspiring no one and nothing
to challenge their lofty heights.
Indeed, in this winter wilderness
my eyes are needled by countless icy spears
that conspire a netted haze
that blinds I and countless others,
perpetually dispelling the fires of ascent,
and keeping our soles from reaching the peaks
where our former trials would stretch beneath us
as ant trails in a bush.
II.
Blinded,
and oppressed with a faceless horizon,
a white nothingness,
I struggle
to move
a single foot.
Humanity
is a white wolf
ravishing itself.
Steam from smoking blood
is ever pouring from pores formed
along the ground, Humanity’s
raw red heart
which thunders like tectonic plates—
clashing,
thrashing,
and breaking apart,
as the pillars of Man
in a continuous and vein attempt
usurp one another.
Such a futile fight,
to feel the blessing of a Sun
which continuously glares down hatefully
on such a confused planet.
The animals have gone with the flowers,
and the insects with the natural rhythms
of life and death.
Now we die discordantly,
as slitted notes on sheets
burned by fires stoked by hands
that have traded instruments of song
for instruments of death.
Ours is a tragic melody!
Ours is a tragic melody!
Ours is a— melody, no less.
III.
Though I find
this forest’s wild howling obtuse,
and struggle
to love it,
a soft fluty breeze blows
through the desolation.
It asks one to close the outward senses,
and to hear it;
it compels one to discard their coverings
and stand bare.
The golden flow
requires trust.
Thus, I stand naked, always waiting
for this tundra’s absolving breezes
to brush my tingling flesh and enter
the slopes of my lungs.
Against my own shadow,
I remain hopeful
that these fluty currents
wind down the lush angles of my inner mountains
and bring a calming coolness
to my spirit.
IV.
Nightly, I dream that within me,
my soft and happy creatures
croak and chirp and sing, and infuse
this outer wild wind
with verdant heat
and pulsing feeling.
I am not a continent so far removed
from the world;
thus, I exhale
golden breaths twined with emerald,
offering back
something warm and alive
to ice scorched
Humanity.
V.
In some hidden dens, I hear
the ice walls melting, dripping,
seeping into softer earth.
I envision my face
within those puddles,
my reflection in their depths
clear as moonlight.
Humanity, my kin,
my mirrored happiness and despair,
my vibrant thunder and wrathful hale,
my fire and ash—
How can I hate you?
Indeed, I am lost within your storm,
seeing nothing in your distances;
however, that is only ignorance,
my embittered eyes’ slant.
There is a horizon.
And it waits—
It waits beyond the white walls
I perceive.
I know this—
I know because there is also a horizon
inside of me.
And somewhere—
Somewhere in those ice pearl plains
stands a godly tree.
Its body a tower
reaching
beyond the heart’s petty winters.
Its branches
crossing
the bladed border that divides
one man from another.
Within this shimmering twilit space
that splits apart horizons,
waits
a bridge and revelation:
Winter and Summer,
their branches interlaced,
beginnings
to one another’s
ends.
Humanity,
a limb
of my World Tree.