Everything that Lives
©August 7th, 2017
By Vijaya Sundaram
Drowning in words,
I turn to the woods,
Where the swell of the sound-tide,
Roaring around my ears
Ebbs to somewhere below chin-line,
And I can breathe, quietly,
And gulp a vast gulp
Of quiet air.
In these woods,
Where the crunch of leaves
Under rhythmic feet,
And the padding of dog-paws
Scouting before me,
And retreating behind me,
And circling around me,
Match a heart-beat that began
When time began on Earth.
I could walk into silence
And never return.
I could sing out loud,
And the birds would
Fall silent, listening.
I could lie flat on a rock,
And let the Earth eat me,
Sucking me into the ground,
And I’d return as a tree,
Growing soundlessly, sending
Shivery sub-sonic fungi-network
Messages to my fellow-trees.
The world and its noise,
Its clamorous minds, its incessant urge
To speak, to shout, to scream,
Voices spinning the planet
Faster and faster on its axis
With the sheer wind of its volume,
Makes me yearn for the silence
Of death.
A silvering, greening brook
Gurgles under a bridge,
A rabbit hops into the underbrush,
A flash of doe and fawn
Leap away on a farther rock,
Soundlessly, but the rocks whisper
And my dog listens, stares, entranced,
While I ache with the beauty
And the sadness of everything that lives –
Here, everywhere.
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