Sacrifice

"Death is static and downright boring;
one needs the patience of the devil's confessor
to endure an eternity of lifelessness."

It's the process of dying that seduces interest.
A slowly dying mimosa.
Half the tree is green and full with seed;
half the tree is naked and gnarled.
Sap oozes from the dying side,
and a congregation hovers there;
ants, butterflies, hornets and bees keep a gluttonous vigil.
A blanket of the living covers that wounded bark,
and beneath the puffy white foam of sap lies a gash,
very straight, very deep, and very unnatural.
An idle hand held a knife,
on an evil whimsy--a flick.
The roots on the living side still rip through concrete.

But death closes its girdle,
and the concrete will begin to settle
as the living roots shrivel.
But not completely,
for each living form alters what's around it and dies,
then the altered resumes its former course,
almost.
For all of the sidewalk will not exactly fall back into place.
And the white foamed manna feeds the swarm,
as the last few seeds make their escape.
A sacrifice
not of anyone, anything on the tree
but of the tree itself.
It is finished
for the tree,
but not for the congregation.








The Wake

Along the flyway where the antarctic wind
scales the icy Andean peaks then plunges
on to the Patagonian plains, a moment exists
between the birth of the guanaco calf and its nursing.
At that moment the impatient gales clasp and trip
the calf's uncertain legs. Now the mother keeps
her vigil alone for the herd has moved on. With
kind intent she hovers with her tempting teats inches
above the calf. Her camel-like neck cranes above
the grass while the sun settles below the mountains.

Dawn, and during the night nature has ministered
its only cure, an end to suffering. The time of the condor
has arrived. But she still patrols, though
the finger-like shadows of splayed feathers patiently
hover over her.
One alights. She charges,
feathers flutter, but simultaneously another carves
a ration of meat with its beak. Again she charges, and again,
makes her futile paces as piece by piece her calf
is lifted skyward to feed other young.

Sunset again, exhausted, hungry, she browses the grass,
nudges her calf, waits, browses again and then
once more raises her neck
to search the windswept horizon
for the herd.

Twilight, and she moves on to rejoin the living.