Lying beneath trees in the heat of the day cannot possibly be compared to any other pastime: to watch the light toy with the leaves, shining bright and brighter in the ever-changing gaps in the leaves turned dark by the shadow. The interplay between the light and the leaves in ever-ongoing banter and they hate to quit their game when the sun moves too far beneath the horizon for the light to reach above the boughs and must return to its source. The wind plays a part in the sport as well, when it rustles the leaves and causes a sparkle in the variance of illumination. Tortoiseshell patterns scatter along your  limbs and features and tumble off the cliffs of your sides into the grass you recline on. The filter of light casts playful interlocking patterns of light and dark impossible to decode without the proper encryption, forever lasting while the world speeds past their lazy game.

Bare feet torn on muddy grass.
Blink slowly,
     feel the wind between your fingers.
Tilt your head,
     offer your throat to the sun.
Laugh,
     make music with the birds.
Run as fast as you can,
     stop to sing with the crickets.
Wander slowly, close your eyes,
     feel the sun play symphonies on your arms,
skin speckled with the light of every star.

n. A homesickness for somewhere you cannot return to, the nostalgia and grief for the lost places of your past, places that never were.

insatiability makes its burrow
in my gall bladder,

wringing bile from the *****,
craving toxins to purge.


i thirst for sweet lexical gaps,
holes in patterns,

dots that don't make shapes
but still gladly connect


komorebi
n. The sunlight that filters through the leaves of the trees

loveliest in the distinction
it is only komorebi

once filtered, green soul
bleeding through

Below, blades are not
safe from snooping golden glares.
And at night, the moon.

She’ll wander back to you again,
but drawn by the string
of ineffable instinct—kissing the sand
of your beaches still damp
by the routine of her departure.
Yet as she recedes,
you already ache her homecoming
as though longing for an estranged relative.

You count the years
by the bitterest point
of every winter, and
value your harvests
against the cruelty of the drought—
and even when she rearranges herself
nightly, by increments you’ve already calculated
by meticulous observation,
somehow good fortune owes you eternity,
even as it crumbles under the weight
of its own impermanence.

You’ve never dealt well with entropy;
all that came before you, which also happens
to survive you—an honorary god.
Stranded on earth,
you monitor your greying scalp as grimly
as you decry a darkening sky above you succumbing
to the certainty of winter, but
even she is ebbing, too.
You curse her departure like an abandoned child,
but she had never sinned against you—
that was your idea.

You mourn the day she repossesses
with mortal anguish,
yet you still find a way to forgive her
when she sends Dawn
to shine his light between the trees.

I think you leave little bits of yourself in the trees
I can always see you in them
Your energy is constantly intertwining with nature
And when I'm in nature it's almost like you're there; in the mountains, the trees, the wildflowers.
It's the tsunami waves of missing you
It's the warm sunny days where everything is alive and singing, "He's all around you, just look."
It's that feeling that you get when you're on a mountain looking up at the sky and realizing how small you really are.
You're the boy who plays with the moon, and I'm the girl watching, mesmerized by the way you two move.  
It's that moment when you love nature so much that it crushes you, because you know that you don't belong.
We are built to destroy, and the world deserves so much better than that.
I know I am a disaster, but you make me feel less evil than I've made myself out to be.
I feel more like a tree when I'm with you.

There’s this word in Japanese “komorebi” it pictures the light that is filtered through the leaves on a tree. It’s supposed to represent the nostalgia, that someone feels as they look upon a memory. I disagree with nostalgia, it means that you miss something that you left behind. If you miss it so much, why must you see it from such a distorted sense? No. In my case, it was never nostalgia. I only saw the light through the leaves because I didn’t want to go blind. I only left the love behind because I didn’t want the pain that came with it. So why, I ask do you look back at the pain?

I'm the tree and you are the sunlight,
sunlight that shines through me.

Crying alone,
It is still raining,
Well that means
the pain is still remaining.

Why is this place is so dark,
There's no room to park,
No room to place myself in the dark,
Also no space to park the pain.

Listen we need to run,
Or else they'll point out the gun,
A gun that hits us everytime they open
Their mouth,
They have no doubt.

I thought we're done,
Our dreams that are gone,
There's no cure,
When there's no reason to be sure.

You saved me from darkness,
A friendship that is full of pureness,
We deserve everything,
But we don't have anyhting,
The destinsy is jealous of us.

We don't know on what will happen next,
We can't take those assumptions and jinx it.

You taught me on how to be brave,
But it ended up seeing our bodies on the grave.

There's hope,
Help me to climb up using that rope,
Don't make me fall,
When there's no one to catch.

Smile like there's no tomorrow,
Smile like there's no one against our dreams,
Just smile,
Your happiness, is my happiness.

Time passes by,
Does our friendship will last long?,
I hope so,
You're the only friend that I have.
A friend that I know that will never leave me.

We could stop the rain,
And it means we could also stop our pain,
Give it to me,
I will take your pain,
And you take mine,
Lets share this road,
A rocky road.

It will end soon,
Look at that moon,
I prefer it than the sun.

The sun rise,
While the moon go down.

In my dream, we we're both happy,
It sometimes make me want not to wake up anymore.
I don't want to wake anymore,
I want to stay in my dreams wherein everything is impossible to happen.

Everything in this world are made of love.
Knowing that love can't change a thing,
Love that can't make people stay.

We we're against the world,
Word by word,
We don't want to listen,
All we want is to be heard.

Let me be with you until the end,
Lets make this friendship last long,
Lets stay by each others side and share shoulders to bury our face and cry together.

We can make it, as long as we're together.
Let us hold hand and make everything possible.

route number nine
we traveled your spine
over two lane vertebra
an occasional scoliotic stray

pass farmer hands in fields
on tractors of painted steel
labored maze rows to feed cattle:
chattel

windowed wind in evening's chatter
filtered light, komorebi, back matter
natural at fifty miles an hour
time melting spills of roadside flowers

and press of an orange-red moon
you unwrap its butterscotch rune
full of eons of seeing eyes, candy store watch
its popcorn face staring, tick-tock

then high-beams replace the sun's
intervals of lightning bug reflectors
into dark, deer vision, tunnel turns
and newly oiled ticking blacktop

distant into day's finish, night
journey's last braking bights
in memories gloaming sight
of a rural tale spin write

-cec

The trees tower over
as if they’re watching me,
eyes lurking in the tall shadows

I take a deep breath, well aware of the sound of my pounding heart, something that seems to align with the life breathing here, green and alive

I feel lost
Like I’ve slipped between the cracks of the comforts of what’s supposed to be mine,
Slipped away from the familiar memory of happiness
Away from the scent of faint lavender and drowsy eyes,
where I can hide from the troubles through sleep

But at the same time, I think this is home
That somewhere deep inside, lies the curve of the stone path, the veins of the leaves that have fallen, everything and nothing at the same time
That I could write myself into here, the life, and settle as if nothing has changed.

My fragile life, woven and held into the above branches, somehow daring to breathe

Home

I look up, taking in the thicket of leaves above, blocking the sun
The one hiding the sky, what really lies out there beyond this forest
The dark.

Yet even then, the light shines through,
the sun somehow managing to paint the leaves in a golden aura
Continuing to warm the land from the outside, never turning away. Filtering into the impossible, breaking all the barriers

Rays that will always reach

Maybe in the real world, in what’s outside in this little sanctuary, the real sun is too harsh for me
Maybe I’ll burn, sparks and flames hidden inside my flesh finally meeting the air
Turning into nothing but ashes washed away by soil.

But right now, in this home,
I'll always have light

if
I had
to describe you,
in one word,
it would be
"komorebi"
the sunlight that shines through the leaves
you are always there,
even when you aren't

i used to listen to music, loud, until my heart began to jump
but after meeting you,
the loud music became too weak

I used to make wishes at 11:11,
but now I rather spend my minute making sure you remember to make your wish

you've taken up nearly every inch of my head
*i can't get your name out of my mouth since you kissed it

because the stream cuts me into paths every morning:
makes me shallow and deep, soft, jagged and drifting
and we all greet the crayfish in miller’s creek eventually:
become ships in the komorebi
become chips off of secret rock below the rusty pylon
on a hilltop, invisible, quietly
pinging signals to the strangers nextdoor from a raspberry bush

because we all become scarecrows, lost
in tomato vine towns
and red maple roots and branches
scared to disturb the dirt or the clouds

because sometimes the bats come out at dusk
to enrapture small ghosts that hang on wilted branches in the woods
climbing toward where the sun used to be

and i join them when that little river runs deep enough

I believe I believe
I believe in the stars
I believe in the sound of the rain
I believe in the seas
I believe in the ear on the track and the sound of the train.

I’m no monk
I’ve no gasoline can
I’m no protest symbol
I’m no match for the believer with struck match
I believe in the unseen support of the choir
I believe we can sing out, shout out, or flame out
I believe we can’t tire out or put the fire out
I’m no monk
I’ve no match
I’ve not set myself afire.

But I believe
in the echo’s return
But I believe
in a soul fire’s ash-free burn.

I believe in the felled forest
I believe in the dissipating clouds
I believe in the march without rest
I believe in testing those testing us
I believe in the pains cried aloud
I believe in the speech no longer allowed .

I believe in the unvoiced voices
I believe in the tentative choices
I believe in the scarred bark
and the broken branch.
I believe in the disease’s footprint, this burl
I believe in the taproot, the sunshine; this world.

I believe in the electricity
I believe in the chemistry
   (Not in the wire, not in the flask.)
I believe in the electricity and chemistry
between two hearts with everything to sing
and nothing to ask.

I believe in the broken voice
I believe in the stolen tide
I believe in the dying breeze
I believe in the bald cypress, lonely on the cliff
I believe in the windblown tuft of seed
I believe in the healing palm and loving hand
I believe in the rot and the pebbles’ fate
to return to these beaches one day as sand.

I believe in the scent of frankincense
and the furry power of the purr.
I believe in the smile
I believe in the tear

I believe in the lamplight
I believe in the campfire
I believe in the stories planted in songs
I believe in the buzzard
I believe in the Sky.

I believe in the human heart
and the bird brain.
I believe in the whisper of pinecones
I believe in the spirit
   of komorebi,
      of petrichor,
         of kami,
            of qì.

I believe I believe
I may be deceived
but I believe I believe
I believe in the power of song
I believe in the shade and the lit
I believe in mosses and stones
I believe the weak are also strong, always strong
I believe in taking a stand and the power of sit
I believe in losses and bones.

I believe in the Elders
   I believe in forgetting.
I believe in the Ancients
   I believe in remembering...
I believe in the handprint in ochre.

I believe in the great and the lost
I believe in the good and the grand
I believe in the minuscule and the beginner
I believe in the mediocre.

I believe in the story of soot
I believe in the heart as well as the foot.

I believe in the canker, the scar
I believe in the cancer
trying to carve a life from life.
I believe in the piglet
and the nest-fallen, crestfallen wren.
I believe in the inbreath, the out
I believe in the powerless and the rumbling of stomachs.

I believe in the plaintive howl of the empty.
I believe incense rising in silken curl
I believe in the dragon and the caretaken pearl
I believe in the cold and the dying
I believe in the old and the ancestral
I believe in the young and the transcendental.

I believe in the moon a balloon
caught up in January trees.
I believe in the rain droplets
   (long after the Rain)
I believe in the dew droplets
clung to fern, clung to turtleback, clung to clay
   (long after the Sunup)

I believe in the frost-heave
of silent sod on a Winter’s eve.
I believe in the hoarfrost
I believe in the petroglyphic vernal pool,
closing in to itself, cracked and drying
and too parched to be crying.

I believe in the sweet pull
of angular momentum;
rounding a corner too far and too fast,
palming the corner or column
and swinging unaligned to face a new path.

I believe in the the cat's fur and the cat's purr,
the sound of lark and the scent of the larkspur.
I believe in the post-rain bejewelment of Winter birch branch.

I believe I believe
And though I know
I won’t achieve
the depth of belief
of a shorn-headed man in a robe
taking a match to himself for the globe
I continue to believe that I believe
in the many simple things
the many simple not-at-all things
that the mind brings to light
and the light brings to mind.

I believe in this moment
that I believe in this moment.

drunk on melancholy, i wander aimlessly
through the solemn state of “komorebi”,
where the sun dances in between leaves,
reflecting its countless memories.

if i had to describe how lonely each step feels,
I would tip-toe around intangible infinity.
my eyes gaze at the neighborhood like
a veil carries me through each door.
and it hurts to hear the laughter inside
because none of it has company anymore.

I wonder if the girls I spent my childhood with
are still behind those walls, in united reminiscence,
or am I the only loner chasing the spirits of the past,
lingering in each pebble my feet passes by.

© fey (02/04/2021)