returning to dust

1.
it is a long journey
from dust to dust
becoming and becoming
until we are
no more

2.
today i sort the wool
rank with goat
and dirt of living –
hook out the bristle thorn,
lucerne stalks and seed debris –
air it on the table in the sun.
sinking fingers into
sun warm fleece
to say the prayers of thanks

because how can this not be holy
grown of the forest
and the sun and the earth
until shaggy with curls
and tree entangled
we meet eye to eye
on the cutting table.

harvest days spent in the goat house
conversations rising and falling into silence
while they press their soft foreheads
into dip of shoulder, leaning into us
as the long curls fall to the ground
to be gathered and sorted and weighed.

when winter comes
we will spin washed fleece
by the warmth of the fire
hearing it speak the names of our gods
from lap to hands to bobbin.

3.
in the caterpillar soup
of this transitional phase
when all we thought we knew
of our work in the world
is being dissolved
amidst virus and enzyme and dust
that storms thick billows
from unbreathable desert.

in this time of transition and transiting,
it is the imaginal that knows
what we never knew we knew,
every thought brought forward into action
from the deep of our knowing matters,
becomes matter in the world
we want to be.

4.
i don’t think i ever mattered to him
any more than he could have
mattered for me
and i don’t say that lightly –
i think we crystallise
the immensity of who we are
into matter – into embodied form
when we love fierce enough,
love enough to animate flesh –
to become an earthbound conduit,
sharing and shaping energy into form.
no, i don’t think we mattered
at all.

5.
the potter sounds the cup
to test if the making is whole
a cracked cup, no matter how
fine the flaw, cannot ring
with the sound of its making.

in the same way
words written longhand
by light of tree
or moon or LED,
shaped digital and saved
by the transient gods
of data preservation,
are tested by the wind
given breath to sound them.
to hear if the note
they played from the deep
holds true.

6.
and then what of these moments
under a summer night sky
when the space between
is no more
and the leaves
on the apple tree rustle
untouched in the moonlight
and everything ripples
ecstatic skin
in voices full soft
saying it is beautiful
it is all so beautiful.

7.
it is the slow grind
of coriander seeds
picked early autumn
in the black stone
of mortar and pestle,
the spinach gathered
thick dewed in the morning,
it is gloved hands on the wheelbarrow
while raven shouts the sky,
it is pawpaw and kiwi and plum and grape
and chilli grown too tall to reach.
it is the slow everyday eating and being eaten
until i am here, the location,
becomes i am here,
the being.

8.
because what do we live for
dust to dust
but this.

In response to Brendan’s excellent essay earthweal’s weekly challenge: EARTHCRAFT(a way of working)

https://earthweal.com/2021/05/31/earthweal-weekly-challenge-earthcraft-a-way-of-working/

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