Shantih Journal 3.1 | Page 55

the sea, nothing else: unconquerable solitude votive flower, lilies amongst timelessness, blue-lipped lake, hills of hemlock and heather, the rush of hungered hounds across the endless breast of distance this is no longer your country, I tell myself, like a creature in love now, it is only earth that exists here, stained with the red tint of mothwings, unutterable mouth, mute grasses, a tongue speaking impermanence animal skin swaddled and brindled with the plain weave of river loss, the price of being, wingless creatures, nightflesh sublime what is it that remains closed, distant, foreign? where do our lives empty themselves? is there a plain that holds all skims its waters, at times, I drown, I do not remember nor does the dawn come and have arms with which to hold me the unbearable? I grow hunched and quiet, I lessen, I lessen, I do not carry it, I carry nothing, uncertainty 55