By Kay Dee
I have a consciousness
I am alert
attentive
The matter of those around
Voices gone
Yet I hear them
Below the muck
My loss
Fulfills a deep bond that remains unbroken
Snapped in two
As joints to limbs
As muscle
Tissue
My nerves never stop
As it wonders
Alive, is the swamp that saved me
Without a consciousness
Without a soul
However, can I thrive?
If no movement has been granted
Sticking out
Born and bred anew
Shoots of spring and fall
Blasting from my skull with vigor
More than my physical body may own
Mud between
Leaves as caskets
Sternum and shoulder
Rocks as pillows
Tibia and shin
Too hushed to let the soil rest
As dragonflies gather
They give life to dust and decay
My nail bed quakes
Becoming a garden so lush
Already blooms on my skin, to them
A desire to live again
Their children play among the grooves of marrow
and fronds that rattle
As more fly away and to me
No more can they
Once cold swallow the bog
Winter would come
Life would be forever drowned
How ever could it thrive?
The sun shines and flowers bloom again
I can see the sun!
Atop skulls mounted in plaster
In alabaster
Such am I
Winds whip the sides of wooden houses
The sun has no place to hide here
The rain comes
The flies squabble against their kin
The ants crawl south
As does the anteater, somewhere warm and humid
Not as here
A child pats the earth
My eyes are still open wider
Wondering
New lessons to be taught as seeds are laid inside my skull
Bedding down under solar lamps
The child may coo and cry for its mother
The earth however
Remains silent
The skull cannot rattle
The bones may not break
The nerves may not shatter
And the eyes may not seek
As the child cries
And I
Simply lay at its side
In the muck
