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Posts Tagged ‘rebirth’

Flourish

Whatever it is inside the larkspur

that says grow, grow, grow,

I want to know it, too. Want

to obey the voice that urges me on,

even in frost, even in rain.

I want to rise out of my own dried debris,

want to know how it is to die and return,

new and yet somehow the same.

And what is it that fuels the drive?

I want to know that— the divine

encouragement that knows

when to wait, when to push,

when to wilt, when to flourish,

when to swell into oh! bright bloom.

I want to know myself as wick,

to be lit, to be the fire itself.

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To say a person’s name is to keep them alive.
–Ancient Egyptian belief

It is odd how much I want to see the mummy,
though I have seen it before. It is the same
as it was then, dark and stiff and behind glass.
The woman is short, she was rich, they know
because of the care taken in how her entrails
were removed, wrapped in linens, returned
to her body before the whole corpse
was salted and dried for forty days.
Only then did they wrap her for good,
this time with scarabs inside the linens.
Of course the dung beetle would symbolize
rebirth. It epitomizes relentless biology.
I love staring at the shape of her face,
the way her toes point up. I love reading
about how they found her in the wrong coffin—
a coffin made for a common man—they could
tell by the hieroglyphics. Part of me
longs to believe that what is dead is dead.
And part of me wishes I knew her name
so I could say it again and again.

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With All the Seeds Inside

There is no work
for the dried out thistle
but to be dry—the earth
has long since spent
its richest greens
and the thistle globes,
spiny and brown,
need now do nothing
but prove how
everything falls.

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