You who fear change | Mitchell Stirzaker

Be water now

Be as water now,
you, who fear the change.
Rain heavy on the ocean.
You, once buoyed by air,
vaporous, skating across skies,
grew too ripe.
Do not cling to your lightness.
Let your own weight
pull you down from the heavens.
Mourn not the fall.
Delight in the thick dance
of your descending,
like an angel
incarnating,
out of love for the touchable earth.
 
Let the ground feel you.

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I will not look away

On the road a dying gala.
Wing torn, bent backwards,
red flesh showing, white bone.
It slept,
but not in the sleep of death
yet.
 
I thought of moving
its delicate body,
as it lay unmoving—
to take it out of the path
of racing conquerors
blackening red earth.
 
But I didn't know how
to pick it up gently,
and as a truck passed, 
it woke,
lifted its head
and cried out into the sky!
The squawks faded, 
but still its eyes gazed.
 
Was it numb to the pain
or feeling fire and needles?
 
How long
had it been dying?
 
I could do nothing.
 
But I would not look away.
I sat with it
as its heart beat slow.
I will not look away
from suffering.
 
I could not look away.
I will not look away.
 
Seeing dying, painful dying,
is so much more alive,
heart rending,
present,
life beating,
ebbing, flowing,
dissolving—
seeing dying is so much more
than seeing death.
 
My heart tore
in sympathy with its bloody flesh.

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©2022 Mitchell Stirzaker
All Rights Reserved

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