poem for madagascar.

All great things rise & fall, grow & die,
all small things too.
I found a place in the world where this is a simple creed
to live by:
It is the law, the rule, the way.

To put up a structure is to gather branches and trees,
to bind with leaves or hammer together haphazardly,
then to simply wait the seasons out until it decays,
leans, submits to its inevitable return to the earth.

The suckling calf in the front yard
who bleats hungrily for its mother all summer long
becomes the cow who feeds upon dying grasses
in the wind-swept hills of dry season,
who then becomes the bloodstains on the cement slab,
its meat the central part of a celebration.

Fish swimming in the morning
are stew that night.
Clothes drying on the line
are caught by the wind,
drift into weeds and vines,
decompose in the dirt without a second thought.

One almost comes to believe here that it takes no effort whatsoever to live.
With as much care as you might discard kitchen scraps into a compost heap,
so you conduct a meeting,
raise a child,
plant crops,
prosecute a criminal.

All great things rise & fall,
all small things too.
If you stay still long enough here
all of life can be explained this way:
there is an impermanence to everything.
We all become recycled through and through again.