December 4th, 2023
“Cocoon”
A poem about healing from my accident
Half finished, half made
Cocoon in a dark place
Not ready for the light or flight
Transforming in my own juices
My new voice cracking
My bones fusing
This metamorphosis will happen
It is inevitable. To ride the breeze
Effortlessly without burden
A prize for all the bitter leaves devoured
After this 3D printing
After this Monarch recipe is followed
I will be the same inside.
The same unrefined hack that somehow knows
Where to plunge his spade (or find the nectar)
More surprised than anyone
By the abundance that springs from nothing
And the same old friends
Will flash their sweet faces before me
And I will pause in the garden to free them
And shake them from my heart
Whether I’m dreaming
Or jumping off a bridge
The same parade of regrets and triumphs
And reluctance to read instructions
The same attraction to the same elusive orchids
The tiny ones you must kneel to see in the unpolluted spring
Every other decade if you are lucky
Opening only for the gentle rays of the sun
Filtered through aspen stands
And the immortal songs
That are impossible to grow tired of hearing
Will play like crickets that hold the summer in place
Love is the only map to resolution
For the diminished
State of this body
Beyond chords with no root
Beyond the tension of these times
The only salve that repairs division
The only osha, the only arnica
What will this world look like with my new eyes?
How will it taste with my new mouthparts?
Sound with my inner ear tuned with solfège?
Feel with vulnerable wings fairy-dusted?
My soft new body shifts
In its old sleeping bag
Limbs blood fluid and wires
Learning new tricks everyday
Impatient to be a different creature
In a different life
Finally ending the song
Returning to the beginning
The tonic, the root
Returning to the one (I)