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 – 2022
