in awe of still being alive

bring me to my knees, oh sunset,

oh last october day before the shrinking sunlight

turns me to a shrinking violet.

the winter kills me off but,

without fail, oh god, so far,

without fail,

i’ve always come back.

i will always come back.

i am in awe of what has gone on around me

while my body’s been on autopilot and

myself in hibernation, sleeping not so much soundly

as breathlessly, running away from

what hides itself under the snow and

6:00pm purple nightfalls, what lays waiting

when the sun refuses to show.

there is holiness, unbound and unabashed in

the way the barren thin fingers of the cherry willow out my window

burst and erupt in bloom, and bees, in april

the bird’s nest in the hollow wasn’t there the last time

i inhabited my body. i revere what

the world has laid out, like a gift,

on my front porch today,

but, oh! if only my solar powered shell

had enough sunlight stored up in the hollows to reach out and take

what was to be mine; but maybe tomorrow.

maybe tomorrow, i can move.

however, this exalting of the nature

is not to forget the people,

who acknowledged my humanity when i

turned cold, brisk, unfeeling like the

polar vortex, when i poured water

over the locks and froze myself out

of my body.

they planted daisies in the spaces between my vertebrae

let the morning glories wrap around my jugular

they waited with baited baby’s breath for my arrival,

whenever, exactly, that would be.

they told the flora and fauna to keep me safe and warm

until i stumbled, through the dewy grass at the

spring equinox, stumbled home at 3, 4, 5 am

to find my body right where i had left it,

just a little different from the last

i’d seen it.

a little, just a little

broken, but,

still good, yes, still good;

they kept my body in decent repair,

they, who fended my ghosts from

my body.

they returned me

a little better than the way

i’d left myself.