december 14
we had to do it alone.
we were alone when we summoned his body from the earth, and now, alone, we return the sum of our bodies to the earth and water and air and elements.
these ashes feel hideously indecent, powdered triune nakedness.
i pour into my hand and they slip through my fingers, soft and caressing like a baby’s touch.
fine like baby powder.
fine like powdered baby.
i strew my heart and my passion and my future and my body along this river. spiritual and carnal comingle, cold rain and hot tears. the water and ash make mud in my hand, and this is creation. i hold the stuff of adam.
creation and desolation, beginning and end.
alpha omega is here, in this infinite moment.
distilled and destroyed image of god.
breath and dust.
i breathe. i choke hot dusty sorrow. it is finished.
but it is also beginning.
a small seed of rainbow, the root of ash, nestled in the womb, a circular room that circles from beginning to end. sky’s life began and ended here; ash’s life begins … and begins again. old mud is formed into a baby who is not yet powdered, bringing forth order from chaos.
i have two babies: one knit into order, the other flung into chaos. earth and water and breath course through the baby of order. the baby of chaos is in the earth and air and sky. my sky child, and my ash child.
a paradox:
my baby who is ash is not called ash, and my baby who is called ash is not yet ash.
the beginning and the end curve together into a circle, and binding them in orbit is love.