CEDARWOOD

Last night in my dream

there was Eros and death -

Thanatos.

A golden young man,

dying by my hand.

I lay with him, stroking his back

in awe and horror of what I had done,

but filled with the certainty of this death.

It was inevitable,

it had to be done.

“Take this,” I said,

“It will help you get to God,”

as I smeared cedarwood oil on his upper

lip.

In my waking life I revisit the dream.

I pick up this beautiful man

and carry him to the edge of the forest.

I lay his heavy body on the earth beneath

a cedar tree.

He and I are there together,

our hands clasped,

as he breathes his last breath.

The light flows out of him.

I split open the earth,

warm and fertile,

and lay him inside.

His body is not yet cool.

The earth swallows him up,

the grass grows over the disturbed soil.

Graceful stalks with little puffs at ends,

like I saw on the shores

of the Aegean Sea.

The sun sets and the sun rises.

He’s in there somewhere,

dissolving as I write this.

He becomes molecules of nourishment

for the vast network of roots,

and the tiny animals

who feed on such things.

I trust that the microbes

and the mycelia

and the earthworms

will do their jobs.

I trust that the roots will pull up what they

need

from the water and the soil.

I trust that the xylem and phloem

will shepherd his atoms through the

trunks and the branches.

I trust that the light will meet the branches

and that green will spread wide, reaching

towards the sky.

I trust in buds and in blooms.

I trust in fruit and in seeds.

I buy some cedarwood oil,

an elegant unguent in my hands and on

my lips.

I breathe in the perfume of ancient myths,

Inanna’s scent before she goes down,

her inhale as she returns.

- Del Mar, CA