L
Lauranimal
Guest
RADIX
Say farewell,
for it dawns on you;
salvage, if it were even possible
would likely risk more than you could bare.
A devastation of wreckage splayed at the bottom of a deep pit,
having hit every vicious rock and sharp ledge along the way down.
You would sooner flay the skin from your body
than return for those pieces. (Wouldn't you?)
Tho retrieve the winding, tendrouse root
witch has long drained in reverse;
pulling away precious resource with only a vague hint
that vital nutrient could ever again up-take.
Adrift without tether;
reaching with blind panic for even the thinnest rail
which might give the illusion of stability,
at least long enough to illuminate rough baring.
And baring gained, ascent becomes paramount.
Balancing tenacious fingertips
upon mere faith that something is there
by which to pull yourself up.
Fumbling in darkness where all time splays out before you, immeasurable;
fatigued by circumstance and hard labor of effort,
a mere thread of light is enough
to hold through the lactic burn.
At last, slipping and scrabbling over the dry, loose rocks of a perilous ledge;
clawing parched earth in a cloud of dust,
you laugh with hoarse disbelief that in this stanza of triumph
you are forced to choke and cough rather than sing a pure note of relief.
Finally, laying exhausted on safe ground;
gratitude beginning to circulate your inner landscape as you
try to keep your eyes open long enough to witness a new dawn,
you draw that long tendrouse root up from the path that lay behind you,
vowing as it gently begins to rain, that you will re-plant it in fertile ground.
Laura T
7/1/2008
(The latin, Radix = from the root)
