Friday, February 5, 2010

Mortality

I don’t believe in death. Never Have. You can crush a thing, knock it down, cut it off, beat it into the ground and it will lie in wait and emerge again. You can kill a thing, shoot it, stab it, bleed it out..kill it with kindness or just sheer stupidity and mismanagement but you cannot destroy it.

Even a burned thing..an incinerated thing.. becomes the air to be breathed, the ash to fertilize the dust of the field.

The poor dead goat dragged to the far fence line runs again, with the fox and the coyote.. each trotting away, head held high, to better grip a bloodied haunch. Eyes plucked and consumed now see through those of the red tailed hawk perched on that far stump, digesting and the once gentle heart beats with the wings of the Great Bald Eagle, whose yellow talons tore at the breast to gain that tender morsel..so that it might soar to the very heights … and the heart soars with it.

The blood of this butchering bleeds into the ground for a final weeping, and the grass beneath it is the better for it. And in the spring, the hare, the badger, the weanling fawn, savor this delicacy that strengthens their own blood, depleted by harsh winter.

Within this holocaust of slaughter and killing, life is. It cannot be any other way.