Relent

Scare the slow down

And exhale

Let the flakes settle to the bottom of the snow globe

That is your new habitat.

Take your full-throttle, lean-in, game-on overdriven  break-neckery and 

Flat out forget it.

Breathe in: 

How quiet it is

How clean:

When the slate gets a wipe and we notice

the rhythm that runs through everything

Like a quiet, riverine metronome.

It is

as keen and as certain

As a heartbeat. 

How noisy is the dawn chorus, audible now 

that the foot’s off the goddess’ throat.

What a humble thing it is to be

Just another creature –  just another compostable –  just another naked lonely soul

Aping God.

How silly all that runaround, all that jostling for position when, really

a herd’s a herd and we are 

Forever sandwiched smack in the middle. 

How trifling: All that longing to belong

When every atom, every cell is made perfectly 

and 

knows how to make, 

perfectly.

 O dethroned ego, you look funny

In the mud 

Pulling handfuls of skunk cabbage and giving them important names like

Symplocarpus foetidis. 

Trying to outwit death, clinging to life instead of 

Luxuriating in it

Going through the motions of meaning when all we had to do

Ever

Was just 

breathe.