through the mat of roots,
into the web of the old seed,
tangled beyond the mind strewn earth
and soul of life’s fingers
lie in a rocky sleep,
crushed bitterly final in the ageless grip
of the mineral roots
the earth claws back,
spreading wild granules of blind soil
over bleached remnants of the green skin
look deep and only, into the abyss,
and remember how the harsh wall of chance
expanded beyond the matter it rejected,
entombed inside the paraphernalia changing,
embalmed by the saliva trickling through the roots,
down into the unknown, weeping dark
the lava wells up through the porous earth,
covering and discovering the established land,
changing colour and harmony,
scribing hard fingers of rooted rock across careening wastes,
and where the arc of sky suspends its mobiles,
great gouts of climbing land throw up
pillars of wild imagination
tracks over trackless desert, feet out of footless sand,
tamed sepulchres grafted onto a country of wilderness;
and from the tombs of hills come men,
tribes moving out in stars along predestined lines;
the roots dig deeper in urgent denial of dismembering,
but the branches of the stars stand black
inside the silkshot novelty, and buds appear;
the leaves fall crabbed and skeletal.
earth is forming from the wind.
the wind is rushing on the land,
the land is shining through the bones,
the bones disintegrate to meet the chalk
winter clutches all the earth,
cocooning all the withered leaves,
webs of ice in skeins of snow,
brittle water pours into the lava flows
and white earth sparkles like the stars
the land lives on in this place,
sleeping,
flat roots unwind and spread among the buried valleys,
the hills unfurl to stretch their mounding wealth
beyond the barriers of time
and they stand, an outthrust of eternity
gripped vicelike in a breathless waste,
crippled by the heights of arrows toppling
the earth falls into itself
by itself
the stones roll on the mountains,
rocks move in the valleys
crabwise to the crusted blight,
counteracting the desolation
pressed upon the land
now there are men to move the rocky crags,
hands to grasp the eager stones,
grass to suck the melting food
slowly the mighty wall of frozen death is undermined,
and life begins around the stone
under the soil the creeping roots have moved
further out across the warmer years,
the sloughing horse furrows steady,
the plough drags and bounces through the crazed ground;
and the reins fly in the sun,
arrows of the palest green
squirm under the slab wet land
poking minuscule tips into the quiet fields
so the earth changes its seasons,
in its ceaseless spinning,
in its many settlements
always the struggle remains,
the power inside levering to become the outside,
the fire core striving for the cool sun
turning itself inside out
in demonstration of existence
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