Again

You are no different than asters that fall dead
in sleep, reemerge each year strong and new. By

midlife, you had fallen twice. First, watched
the pieces leveled one by one, left to ask what remains
when no one calls, when accolades fester into
gossip, when all our proud self-sacrifice, clever deeds

feed the march of maggots. The Perennial Story. Then,
having emerged, you saw it everywhere. How
what dies is nothing and divinity still seeks divinity. How
the brilliance of pigment, the ground-claiming rout

of foliage is mistaken for the life force invisible, strong
for the dying. “So,” you preached, “let it be.
Surrender to this new birth. You are not the maggot
feed. That is nothing. You are the endless life.”

Until it happened again. Piece by piece. This time love.
This time justice. This time sense. One by one. The ground
itself dead in a winter of grief and grasping, fierce
grasping to what was dear life. Then finally, it was

over, the pain and tearing. You thought it was over. It may
yet be. It is okay to stretch your petals and turn. These
are the clothes you wear a few decades, they may be beautiful.
There is the sun. It is okay to eat create laugh. But

can you see? Have you learned the pattern? Again
you will die, you will rise, you will return. New.
More than once if you are blessed
and brave. The final dare is: Let it be.