Naturam expellas furca, tamen usque revenit. – Horace, Epistles

Slow. I am at rest. No. I am not resting. We beings breathe the three-in-one, creating-begetting-proceeding. The divine does; the imago deis. We are parched, desert-time frosting catabolic catastrophe, the dust unsettles in place. I am kudzu. Body. My soul hurts. Mind. I am a vine. Spirit. I am reborn. Earth.

Tree sap syrups the forest. Evolution paints ants along the aphid-dotted floor, the rococo of the Oversoul. Walk / Stay. Heaven drips mercy into amoral nature, strife recomposing into unity, the dance of the Dao. I am a many-worlded being, stardust teeming with bacterial galaxies. Harmony is woven difference, needles threading anima into the theater of time. I am a place I am always arriving-at. Here. When? There. Now? Being swallows the sooted pine, life ticktocks the dawn. I am a willow.

Stop and breathe. Pause. Silent. Still. Do you move or does the world? You have turned the earth into an icon and humanity into an idol. The common-being can’t be found. (You cannot locate the universe.) We seek the already-here. Take a step back and ask: when was the last time you let the world speak? (Pity the philosopher who speaks of transcendence.) The immanent is an expanse far greater than eternity. You paint the sky and pretend it’s art; butterflies burn civilization. Wait. Brain-deep in the swamp of concepts we drown our lungs in thought. Breathing is a forgetting; knowing is anamnesis.

Hades is a place you can touch.

Come forth into the light of things, Let Nature be your teacher. – William Wordsworth, The Tables Turned

Image: The Forest Edge by Gustave Courbet (n.d.)