First sun-warmed sand
First boots-and-socks-off beach
First ankle-deep stand in rushing water
First SPF rubbed on my face
First crocus pops up in the yard
(Delicately)

Nearby, a young father begins
to teach his toddling young
how to fish.
(Patiently)

Last high-country snowshoe
Last low-country woodstove fire
Last hot bourbon toddy
Last dreamy days of Pisces
Last longing for lost love melts away
(Finally.)

Early over the mountain
the nearly-but-not-yet worm moon
spies the confluence and I below.
(Knowingly)

Here at the place where things change,
the wild world fills me
and I devote myself once more.
(Wholly)

For one who is in love with the chase
And the glory of all things yet-to-be done,
The true rapture of Nature is in knowing
She is too Big, Wild, and Free to own.
(Like me.)

I am being made new.
The egg, cracked in half.
Taped together with scotch tape and super glue.
The yolk entirely devoid of its once-consistant home.

This is emptiness.
This is being renewed.
This is what it is to feel and not feel.
To be and not be.

The hand dips me.
Reaches for me.
Dunks me in a solvent of cement and tissue paper.

I am rock.
I am eggshell.
I am tissue paper.
I am two parts vulnerable,
one part entirely indestructible.

I weigh 1000 tons.

I would sink in a river.

I miss the yolk that once inhabited me.
Golden yellow:
So much promise. So much desire.

A gray mallet cracks me open.
It ecavates me.

I miss my terrible weight.

A hot glue gun binds me back together.
I am neither egg nor rock nor air nor yolk.
I am all and none at all.
I am egg soup.
Egg solid.
Egg squared and solidified.
Egg smashed and built again.
        ...The limitless persistance of life.

His eyes wore the red of tears
wept, kept hidden from all
sight and sound to fester in
the darker crevices of his
crown. But now it’s spilled on
the ground in a puddle like
fresh blood from opened veins.

And now, with all those pounds
off his shoulders and the boulder
stuck in his throat now swallowed,
he makes the promise to sing
his own song, to write his own
lyrics and bear with any rebellion
to his rule. His rule over himself.


-
by Aleksander Mielnikow