The Song of the Phoenix

Photo: (c) Jamie K. Reaser

What can be said about you in truth is unknown,

but still you hearten long-wearied worlds with

the idea that we can rise again from

dear things destroyed.

What form are you?

What color?

I think the story tellers have taken their

liberties with what is visible, while leaving the great

sages to contemplate despair, wonderment, joy

and other unsleepable things that cannot be seen.

What calls out to you to do as you do for

five hundred years at a turn without reward

or even the acrid scent of mercy?

Ashes to ashes, note the most trusted scribes,

till thou return unto the ground;

for out of it wast thou taken:

for dust thou art, and unto dust

shalt thou return,

though they didn’t realize that it was you

at the time of scripture.

Your entombment and decay,

teachings, warnings, reckonings:

we must not diminish the ancestor’s

departing blessedness for the ancestor is the

vessel from which new life emerges.

So must say the toad of the tadpole,

the tree of the seed,

the man of his mother,

the woman of this earth, and

the earth of something wordless.

I’ve never heard spoken of your song,

but recently I learned it

as it glided, breathlessly,

across my own vocal chords

in response to some beckoning

from above.

It seems that I am the Life that

has been left behind.

© 2018-2019/Jamie K. Reaser

From "Truth and Beauty" (a work in progress)

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