Pleroma

 

A moment ago in the sweet sad seeming of April,
this fat plum was a tiny white un-bud.
Now the hummingbird’s persistent tick
scolds you to attention.
The perishing golden catastrophe 
of a late August dahlia means something 
that you cannot look up in a book.
Children play on earth while grown-ups 
gaze through thingness into quieter worlds.
But perhaps it's the other way round.
Children cross over and return like ravens, 
mushrooms, mountains in mist,
while the old ones remain here,
too gray to remember that this is a land 
of sacraments, things pointing beyond 
themselves, toward some ineffable beauty 
deeper inside them than they are.
The bones of heaven are the bones of earth, 
and you are a garden of doorways.
Colors augur more than umber, green, carnelian.
Bodies are portals to the formless.
All I can tell you is, your soil is silence,
your root is breath, your blossom is wonder.
Death will ravish and burst your heart, 
and you will release the fragrance of love.

Painting by Étienne Colaud, d.1540