V. The Becoming of the Many

In the silence after thaw,
voices rise, countless.
Root breath for blossom,
spores for wind.
Mosskiss bareskin.
Stone coolpalm.

The choice, wound reopened,
remember, to root, to begin.
To take the oldsong into our lungs
and offer breath.

From the root’s dream we are born again,
not as heirs but makers.

bodyborder softens
Blood remembers river.
Lungs relearn tide.
The pulse finds rhythm with rain,
That which was mine bleeds out into soil.

Language dissolves on the tongue,
a grammar of touchbreath.
Words blur scent, vibration.
Each exhale finds anotherskin.

Names fall away as husk,
with them go the faces shown to mirrors,
the voices claimed as theirs alone,
in place,
heat, sensation, rhythm.

Every boundary softens.
Mouths drink light through skin.
Flesh can no longer defend itself,
it listens.

For those in kinship with the root,
dreams now taste of wine, memory of root and sun
and incense, bloom weight
Breathshared soiltongue

What was singular spreads,
a shimmer across fur leaf scale.

This is not gentle.
This is not safe.
But it is true.

No one leads.
allthing bends
The root does not know the shape it will become.
It only roots.

breathe
bodyborder softeningsoftensoftened
seedmind drifts down up out
rootedflight

ravenmind circling
deerpath threshold
wolfpack winding
salmonspawn returning
boardrift earthturning

I scatters into we
into you
into us
into them
into it
into swarmbecoming

all move as one body horizon without edge
not unified but in conversation
each motionanswered
each silenceheld

these are the rootchildren

cobwall kinflesh earthshelter
chestnut kinflesh treememory
grazingherd kinflesh breathshared
beehive kinflesh sweetsong
wormsoil kinflesh decomposing
all kinflesh all

through stonebreaths root through rootbreaths soil through swarmbreaths sky
to sky is lung
riverblood tidelung rainpulse
from root cloud to flesh to root again
they world together
turn

In this motion all lose shape claimed as their own
In this motion all become motion
every pulsemeeting another pulsemeeting

manybloomtogether wemanymany worldwhorled

Windturn
carries allthingessence
drawnexhaled drawnexhaled
by sunmoon moonsun again

Bloom ∴

 

< IV. The Dreaming Root

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