Savannah

We cut things down, 

hack, slash back towards horizons,

eyes ever reaching for an expanse of sky

to settle upon the edge of land,

as if just to know this blue view, 

to open a swathe of light,

is a freedom in itself.

The next time we look across a meadow

as it motions, wavers under the spell

of unseen forces, and we find our gazes 

lengthening into the distance, a deep breath,

that instinct will rise in us again,

engender a yearning,

how our feet will make a pathway there.

Because even in the dry seasons, even

in the midst of emptiness, punctuated 

by the raised hands of lonely stands of trees,

unable to bridge their canopy, unable

to talk to one another, or 

where the meat of earth has hardened,

a desiccation, and we feel it in the tightening 

of our throats, a wringing, and

the closer to the ground we descend

so we sense time slowing 

as if we were drowning - a gap that widens

between us and today's chosen god.

But still we will crown ourselves a grass king,

tie wishful knots in a blade of it, 

wear it, burn it, watch the turns

of greens and yellows, we will bind our hope;

measure it in the proximity to water.

And the stream, the taste of it, the pebbles

I swallowed, sat knock-knocking their burdens

in the bed of my stomach, we cut things down, 

we clip them back - yes,

love is its own kind of suffering, 

and in this suffering we notice we are alive. 
 

Image is from pixabay. Image on Twitter also is from here: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%27Crossing_the_Prairie%27_by_Jules_Tavernier.jpg