Visitors of Eden

We are the visitors of Eden;

we are searching

for the way back to seeing.

I was looking for a guide

but I only wanted a protector,

to treat me like a lover

and to save me from the storms.

Rather, I must listen

to the garden’s growling growth

and watch its creatures learning slowly,

feeding on each other, just to wonder

at harsh indifference

and to marvel at this cold beauty;

riding waves and chasing tails

in strange greatness.

The artist wants to be gentle

and keep herself clean,

but the seer is just a child, kind yet vulturous;

blood-stained and mud-soaked,

talking with the trees.

Where was I before I was found here,

land-locked in laggard limbs,

slack-jawed and gaping

at the world?

I remember I could hear

the trees talk back to me.

And I remember

when I was the hunter

and when I was the prey

and when I was the watcher,

waiting.

I am watching the garden

shrivel and bulge and bleed and blossom.

I am here, in spring,

soon to watch summer turn to autumn,

as I was here

in spring,

one thousand years ago,

when these ancient forests still were young.

I have existed since the dawn of time

and seen through many different eyes.

The soil will swallow me again;

there I will wallow in soft slumber,

in rich siennas and warm umbers,

until one day

I’ll be sculpted into another form

to fumble further down the path.

I am a vessel of consumption

and a vessel of creation;

and when the world takes back my bright blue eyes,

It will pour from them the sea

back into its basin.