Nature in manhattan has a bitter after taste
I suppose it’s less about the human touch and more about our constant strive for excellence.
Perfectly placed lilies line the fountain
Forced into patterns without attending to mother’s chaos and order.
It bothers me.
In seeds planted by humans
For human pleasure
This garden in which I went to escape exists within the realm of human concern
And it angers me–after touching the center of my own stratosphere
To visit some place designed to imitate everything it is not and everything it wishes to be.
The sirens mock me as I sit with the birds
Flies rise
Hot heavy with my height
Wet paint in a garden of construction; destruction
If I didn’t need to rush here would I have even left at all?:
I miss the sound of silence
I strip my gaze from the egoic page
And a dancer saves me–becoming part of the boulder
They are everything this garden is–yet also everything they wish to be
Without claim
Or fault
Mending themselves to the concrete
Transforming it to clay
Blinded on the ledge with enough trust to fall
Without need to re-grip
Gracious
They are the stem between the cracked cement. A conjunction between
Being and becoming
Free to both envelop and blossom in one
The blend I had been waiting for I now see has been here all along.
See, the stem, the seedling, and the man are all one
Today I am viewing the world from the eyes of the traveler. Absorbing the hum of indistinguishable languages
The echos
The fresh noise caresses my skin
Inviting me into myself
A hug I’ve longed for since
I’ve returned
I’ve been depriving myself of this warmth.
The absence of light–the flicker
I’d smother to death had been mocking me at my failed attempt to outsource
Materializing light–as though I needed the physical fire as fuel or lighter fluid
When light is not physical like a body, nor this hug
Encompassing me
See it’s the noise–the echo within the silence–paired with the overwhelming connection between man and seed
if overwhelming were to carry a positive connotation
That’s enveloping me into this moment–as though I’ve finally discovered how to sense earth in the concrete
Not beneath it
And not only sense but root myself to it the way my bare feet grip the dirt and dust and murky mud at the bottom of the spring
Or in the middle of the lake 10 arms under the surface where it’s dark and cold–where my ears almost explode to only equalize the moment before I would have shot up–but
instead the pressure holds me the way the echo holds me now and my heart rate slows, though my breath is running out, but it doesn’t panic me because for once,
it doesn’t feel fleeting.
My freedom, I suppose I mean by my breath.
And with this image in mind, in the middle of the lake, I created images of what I would have imagined had I been there in that moment. Yet at no point did I ever escape where I am now: on the second floor of a museum across central park–with indistinguishable languages echoing the empty space–filling it. Painting the white columns and high ceilings.
Not once did I leave my home
Though my perception of it
Matched that of the French couple sipping tea to my left
with fresh eyes.
We observed one another
In wondering their story, they help create mine
I walked into the garden resenting its contrived birth
Rooted in the realm of human concern
But as I sip my own tea from above and without
I am certain I will re-enter with grace
The man who plotted the pre-perfect space and planted the plot into imported soil
was birthed by descendants of the seeds held in his palms
All ancestors from mother, herself.
While his corpse may not live to see them bloom, the flower doesn’t know it will crumble.
It doesn’t know it was once held in his palm
The way he may not know he was kindled by her spirit.
But I’m glad I do and that he will and she does
And that it–the lily of the field–doesn’t have to.