The Stir

The Stir

 

I was never

Comfortable in the

Body that I lived in, always protruding in funny

Places, jutted back, skinny

Height, bandy legs, stabby

Voice.

It tread

Arhythmic steps with

Feet between two 

Sizes, and saw 

With blurry eyes always keeping

The world a

Layer away.

 

But when I died, I lost my shape.

Slowly, at first.

My blood dried, and my blotchy skin went

All the same colour - a sallow green

With patchy holes

Until I let it go completely.

 

Then, with time in-between,

All my points and joints

Seemed to soften, with the erosion

Like a glacier, moving, pushing me, dusty, 

Until I came free from my

Trappings

And I moved on into the soil.

 

I joined with the others for the first time. 

We wove spirals through the ground

Nursing snakes and worms,

Insects, shrews, moles, foxes;

Dances around beating bodies' warmth

And I felt the stir of the Earth, of everything...

 

I was a root, a bough, a leaf

I touched the air again, lovingly,

Until the day came where I crumbled and it carried me off.

 

I glided over forests and rivers,

Birds and deer, fish and flower-heads

And went some way until I reached the limits of a city.

I blew in,

And found streets of people, so many people, who were once like me,

But I moved through them all now

With a grace that was never mine in life

Until, satisfied, I rose up out of those concrete canyons,

Caressing the top of a tower block

And careered away into the afternoon again.

 

Then, I was a bootlace, a window, a washing-line,

A daisy field, an old town, a mountain,

The lightning, the ocean, the sky;

The universe.