Camp out in foreign landscapes, inside of yourself.
Shake loose the withheld keening until your crow’s feet
bleed dry, for this night choir will palpate the stars
in coloured incarnations.
Reject the ornithologist’s bible; you already know
the flocks gathering on hilltops — on land
that will remain long after you’ve gone.
Swathes of birds will always retreat, towards trees
that hold your heart strings.
Autumnal leaves hail on forest floors in warm
nor’ westerly winds; coalesce in this elemental
release, because nature has no purposeful duality.
Face outward to go in — return to a body
that craves sunshine in its bones,
when death has recharted the map of you.
Fears are frost-tender fragments; remember
to place your hands gently in the soil.
Sit in a corner tight, comforted by the triangulation;
then widen yourself — sway your danse macabre,
to confront this ever-present mortality.
Collapse in fields devoid of people, where blackberries
will stain your fingers; for this absence
is a nebula of enormous proportions.
Hear these tender confessions, and yield yourself to grief.