On Beauty & the Wasteland - v.2/issue 6 - Down

  

On Beauty & the Wasteland

V. 2 / issue 6

Down

Who is entombing who? 

What a question — who is indeed? 

I go down. Sinking.

Down through the thorns and sinew of my neck, the express elevator shaft of my spine, passing by the koi ponds and fountains and rose gardens of my heart; the bubbling acid pools, the hearth fire, the wide expanse of my ample hips. 

Down through the root rot, the sudden sharp slices on the backs of my knees, my leg tingles, my heel crags. 

Down into the dark. The cool mossy depths. 

Plunging

Down. The moist earth, the scuttling creepy crawlies. 

Down. The fungal hyphae with their nematode nooses. 

Down into the mycorrhizal symbiotic soil webs.

Into the refreshing depths of the deep dark well with the stone and lichen and moss

Cobwebs with old auntie spiders greeting me. 

I find myself in this familiar place, which this time seems less a tomb and more a stone stomach womb church.

Looking up, I see a round light through the well’s opening, grandmother moon shining down upon me. 

The forest surrounds me on all sides as I lie at the bottom of this old, old well

Spiraled like a fetus.

It is digestion time; It is gestation time.

And I rest.

***

A curious, elegant spiral organism lies at the bottom of a tube 

Like the view through a compound microscope.

I ask myself, 

“Who is the spiral organism? Who is looking through the microscope? Who is writing these words? 

And who is asking?”