A Meeting

She steps into the dark swamp

where the long wait ends.

The secret slippery package

drops to the weeds.

She leans her long neck and tongues it between breaths slack with exhaustion

and after a while it rises and becomes a creature

like her, but much smaller.

So now there are two. And they walk together

like a dream under the trees.

In early June, at the edge of a  field

thick with pink and yellow flowers

I meet them.

I can only stare.

She is the most beautiful woman

I have ever seen.

Her child leaps among the flowers,

the blue of the sky falls over me

like silk, the flowers burn, and I want

to live my life all over again, to begin again,

to be utterly

wild.

The melody of birth harmonizes with the haunting notes of death and calls us into the wilderness.  Entering that path, footsteps pause and our resolve falters, for we know not what is before us.  Yet if we do not go forward, we will miss the most beautiful sight we will ever see.

What is it that you would see along this path?