Born,
of soft-scented shell, lace,
a friable womb that sloughs away
under starlight, the trembling aether,
dewdrops, all those things and none
are what my kind are born of.
I am winged gossamer, scaled with diamonds.
An almost-mindless thing, senseless, lifeless,
for though I live my life is nothing yet.
Raucous wonder sounds from voices twinned to mine;
like stars or dewdrops we are strewn carelessly,
uncaring, but that will change.
Scales dull, the diamonds of our pelts eroded,
not by nature's newness but by knowledge,
by the fire that claims us, tames us.
The first death is easy.
Easy as birth was,
easy as flight was
or singing to starlight.
My beating hearts slow to thrumming thunder,
the swaying pitch collecting mind
and spirit from distraction.
As one, swept under,
we court our own destruction,
rushing senseless into motion, conflagration
and rebirth.
Hesitant
sooty cinders drift away in silence,
a slick of graphite memory in the dark.
Cold chills pierce me as I flex my wings
and listen, listen to the whispered sussuration
of our newness, and, so chilling, newly now,
our fewness.
I am born,
of carrion crystals, into hunger, mortal truly
now with fear of dying. Ice-clad, self-deceiving,
sighing, I fly on 'til dark turns dawn and find
my fellows flying on beside me, never yet alone,
leaving the crumbled sister-shells behind
unmourned
forgotten.
Years pass, or maybe aeons,
as shimmering shadows, lost and fragile
children chasing raindrops, drinking in
the light and water, scaling ourselves
in icy armour that cannot help but melt,
for we are fire and freedom, bright
and shining things that blaze and hunger,
cannibals, quenching fire with blood, not water.
Death is waiting for us all, within us.
In our fear we freeze and cage it,
stiffening with it in our shrinking
skins and shrieking souls.
The second death is painful
weeping tears and jagged tears,
painful as life was
had we but tried it.
This is where we fork and change,
awake to difference. This is
real birth, to life, uniqueness.
We scatter, still uncaring, sharing
nothing but our drive to live,
to learn what drives us, makes us,
what will bring us back and break us.
There is a last appointed hour,
a time and place, the singing stars
that watch us time- and tireless tell us
in a rush of understanding.
This is our maturity:
a gift of ends unending, and for many
it is all, enough, a chance
to slough the life that tires us,
a tightened lifetime full of cares
and daring given up, exchanged
for bliss and peaceful death
and new lives soon engendered.
Not all, but most, will fall and fade,
the diamonds in their eyes consumed
and splintered, shared, dead to cares
but not to caring.
Not all.
While most are whole, the stars
find others wanting. Jealous bladed riches
chain the gaudy while their greedy fires
rage onwards, outwards, leaving them
a hollowed skin, a thing,
a crystal void that once flew breathlessly
bedecked in diamonds.
Not I.
Have I found myself, found the limits
of my soul?
Not yet.
I am wanting, more.
Each death will be harder: rending fangs
and claws that strip the skin, the airborne
grits of ages, flames of solar fire,
or slow decay to vacant vacuum vapours...
but each time, birth awaits me, star-spun
singing waking me again to greater life.
Dreamlike,
the lesser lives and years appear,
each one a pulsing diamond glinting
in the darkness of my spirit,
offering up a lesson in refraction,
reflection,
contemplation.
I never thought to be so much,
but am.