Forest

- Day 6: Poetry - 

​The only way out is through
   and the only things I thought
         I knew
         drift away from my stem
         like dandelion fuzz on the wind.
 
There’s no point in wishing
   on flowers,
   candles,
   or stars,
   because as it is with praying to a god
   we forget how capable we are;
   that wisdom is the awareness
      of how little we know;
   that trees don’t pray or plead,
      they just grow;
      they don’t reject the moisture,
         they just absorb;
      they don’t fear the darkness,
         they just root down low.
 
No options but death or
   to dig into me:
         to see the eternal recurrence
         to reject a soothsayer’s assurance
         to slay myself in the search for meaning
            as a truly meaningless being.
 
Something is rotten in our
   collective existence,
   and our stench wafts upward
   like roadkill on hot asphalt
   when we all together express
         resistance
   to the truths that victims aren’t at fault
                           that poverty is not a product of laziness
                           that there is violence inherent in the system
                           that we can only blame ourselves for lack of vision.
 
It has long been time
to throw off old skins
   and bury our carcasses in the earth
   and watch as former selves
         compost and decompose
         turning death into soft loam
         into a soil so fertile
            that meaning can’t help but grow.
 
If you’re not enraged
   you’re not paying attention
   and you’ve grown accustomed
   to a flesh-eating infection.
   And even though nothing really matters
   what the fuck have you got to lose
         by helping someone grow through?
         by connecting to humanity’s vast system of roots?
 
Don’t aspire to be the wind,
   but instead be the seed
   that finds the good stuff to sprout in,
   that can’t be anything but grounded,
   and learn that resiliency is found in
         not aloneness
             but the forest.