MonuMental

My leaves thin as if I’m one day to be a freestanding pathway of veins. The channels pass freely though the skin that they serve can retain only a fleeting gasp of breath. My frame trembles and posture becomes poorer yet.

How can this be.

Perhaps if still water could explain why they once ran as swift then lay their hurry to rest at river’s edge. Why the scripture written by the silken curvature no longer engraves its wisdom along the outskirts of sprawling fields with enough post script and commentary to fill the space above with substance and grace, feeding its extended body with strength enough to blossom seeds as if the entire area were a hymn to the world of continuous breath and perpetual growth.

Maybe it could explain the whispers that were once the after breath of day and how I can no longer hear a sound but a thread-bare vocalic decent from want to weary.

Perhaps the great swell that allowed these waters to rise from out this Earth has descended and retrieved its substance once-bestowed.

The only light that nourished my abrasive stem, textured and chaffing, nearly penetrates every layer from the cradle where seed and germ adhere to my rooted network that delves beyond sight and reach.

I feel the weakness of structure only recognizable by the presence of others.

Those around me know nothing of this, yet I can only observe this by our co-existence. Recognized only through co-inhabitance. Though it is obvious we are guided on separate paths, no less in opposition than in divergence, we are contrasting vectors of maturation, as if I am the last key to an old world.

My connection to this Earth it eternal, though transient.

My leaves thin as if they are to one day fall like snow from heaven.

Softly.

Permanently.

A one way avenue whose currents are steered by more than the gravity of the world. A declination of minimal impact though an epic within my circle.

My growth had always been a product of cyclical forces encircling my frame from within an invisible enclosure.

I peer at the ground and see remnants of myself. My blooms lose their connection to drift flaccidly and rest so delicately they appear to never touch the soil. Yet they are one. Comprised of the same material that was me, once was clay, once was rock, once was fruit.

My leaves thin as though the very air to whom they used to pay fragrant homage has reclaimed them as their own.

My very being begins to scatter itself throughout the wind to sparsely inhabit all states of matter. Spreading itself the way starlight grows dim with distance. My body wears along its assigned chronology away from its escaping origin.

The moisture at my footing loosens the fundamental grasp I have to this place and with patience, stillness infiltrates a firm scaffold.

With the world’s sweet honey clinging to my roots like a fertile blessing of wax around a vital wick, running deep within a pillar of transformation, comprised of past and future, additional pieces of me join the Earth’s lymphatic movement and souvenirs are given out for all things to remember.

I forget what I was and become all things.

The bowing of my legacy as represented in this withering stalk meets no resistance.

My color has become faint and with no palette from which it can regain its boldness my expression is saturated with exhaustion, not vibrance.

I kneel into the shadow of those whom are to follow and deprive them of no further opportunity to reap the best of what I have received. Tomorrow a new soul doth rest.

I hang my key with beauty renewed.