Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them -

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided -
and that one wears an orange blight -
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away -
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled -
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing -
that the light is everything - that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading.  And I do.

There is a tree behind my neighbor’s house that I can see from my yard.
The leaves are amber from autumn into early winter.
When it’s windy, they fly off in a flurry, the tree’s narrow trunk bowing under Mother Nature’s weight.

Weaker trees around it fall. The tree in question does not.

I watch in awe, every year, as the leaves yellow and brown and eventually fall from the tree’s boughs.
It’s a pity, sure, but I am content that for a few months, I get to watch them grow and evolve.

Today, the leaves’ golden hue peeks at me through a kitchen window.

The branches are leaning over, war-torn by days of storms, reaching toward the earth.
The distance between the leaves and the ground is ever-shrinking, a point approaching zero but never quite reaching it.

In a few months, the tree will be barren. Its fallen leaves will decompose.

They will never meet the new generations of leaves that come each spring.
They will never bear witness to the metamorphosis of their former home, to the growth and change it will undergo in the years to come.
They will never see their stronghold eventually splinter and collapse under the weight of Mother Nature’s force and fury,
becoming one with the earth toward which it was so desperately reaching.

I wonder what it's like to be the one left behind by change.

I’ve always believed it a privilege to be allowed close enough to witness another’s development,
To be along for the journey as they shift from one version of themself to the next.
But this, I realize, is a privilege that I cannot even afford myself.

There are pieces of me that will never see the changes next fall will bring my neighbor’s tree.
There are pieces of my neighbor’s tree that will never see the changes next fall will bring me.
Parts of me will die before other parts are born; it is a fact that simultaneously troubles and comforts me.

Perhaps you, Reader, will never meet the newest versions of me.
But then again, neither will I.

How do the gnawing claws of Death ache less than the resultant onslaught of loneliness?

Start with the breath,
Shaky lately, it changed with the stains a painting formed on my chest came leaking, sneaking black bubbling death
It foamed up towards the roof of my vest,
Cough is hoarse excuse me my poorly conveying the truth I confess that maybe I've trained my brain to ignore the distress culminating the gruesome express

Eyesight now, and my Eye's feel numb
Two flocks fly in the light of the sun, side by side in a sign like a gun that stops my stride in time with the young, I wonder why and who had time to train these geese to write ******* W's alright, soon it fades from mind a two days wait until it's time to light up the night blunt try somma my cut the line trust is high up sigh at thoughts thought in my mind fuzz fought climb up bought thine scuffle what ******* geese fly in V's I'm blind cuz.

Minds in circles my muscles in decay my brain can't keep track of the ******* days
I'd buy the parcel from hovels of dismay trade for ants to keep mortality at bay
I'm afraid I wished for death too often, it waits till I'm content to grant it's bubbles while I'm coughin.

I want to die out here with you
I want to decompose in your arms
our flesh slowly growing softer, and softer as our skin rots and our organs decay
our bones slowly growing closer, and closer
until our leg bones are not separated by leg flesh and our hip bones are not separated by hip flesh and our hearts seep together over our rib cages and our skulls press together, chin to forehead
dry leaves tickle our feet and the cool wind soothes our hot bones and the earth covers our clasped hands
until they can no longer tell who was me and who was you

Why does everything decay and fade?
Time touches everything,
A great destructive force
We exist to wither and watch everything fall
Bringing close to our hearts that which will die
We try so hard to create as much life as is lost
But once it is lost, it will not again be found
So we cry and ache and scream out
With a hope that maybe something will hear
And tell us why it is that we must live
Just to watch the world decay

So this is what pain feels like:
A rotting in the center of your tooth.
You don’t want to touch it (that’s where the real pain starts),
So you leave it.
And a dull ache becomes a sharp one;
Decay on the inside becomes decay on the outside.

And then your tooth is black.

It hurts more than you’ve ever felt
When the dentist takes his drill to your tooth.
It somehow hurts even worse
When he tells you that he can’t salvage it.
        You can’t turn decay into strength, he says.
        You can’t bring death back to life, he says.

Now, there’s an empty space where a tooth once was.
You run your tongue over it, mindlessly, daily—
In a few weeks, the raw flesh becomes toughened, smooth—
It’s like nothing was ever there.
No tooth. No decay. No death.
But you still remember.

You still feel the ache.