to suffer
the burden of seeing
beauty
in everything, the unquiet
ache of knowing, the peerless
stinging grief
of beholding:
the perfect polished wholeness
of each unbreathing moment, every
newfolded leaf or shifting shade of honeyed
of honeyed greygold dappling
decayed parchment of shed foliage
masking lowtrodden paths between trees, the slow
creeping blue of their pewter barkskins
and breezeshivered branches in the deepening
eventide, the white drops
of lustred moonspill in sleek mercurial shiftings
across the black dayless carpet of sea that sprawls
toward nightgreen horizon,
and every joy walks handfasted
to emptiness, and sorrow
scrawls its blue name
across the face of summer days
too much
beauty, too
much roselight, too much
to bear the weight of
throughout the endless
clocksong of days unnumbered
to wish to die
to escape it, to wish
to last
for but a single day more, or
to live, always
and hale and everyoung, til
the amber days of the unmaking
scourged of all defilement
frailty or blemish
to lift the stain
of mortality, to
taste air and drink deep
the measureless sunlight, to
plunder
the sacred larders of the deathless
that our blood might be turned
to the untarnished ichor of the undying
and all our mortal pities shed
like leaves
upon the frost:
in the veins of forever,
naught but gold,
the scent of stone
and rain.
[petrichor: the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil, from Greek petra “stone” + ichor “blood of the gods”]
Photo Credit: leoncillo sabino Flickr via Compfight cc
