Where we die,
in elephantine canyons of despair.
In the morning when the light
rushes through the window
and we hold on for one last glimpse.
The spirit doesn’t die easily.
It weeps and wails in the end.
With tusks worn down through battles
with dreams and shipwrecks.
Where we die is a child.
Its last stare at beauty,
at fog,
hearing something it missed.
Its name called out
beseeching it to wake.
Then no more in someone’s arms.
Lost.
A shivering in the trees.
A stillness.
A rhapsody and struggle.
This is divinity,
transcendence.
Dust to dust,
atonement forever.