LIFE

Life is as powerful as death;
and more powerful—the most powerful of all.
As chestnuts drum against the pavement
and leaf after leaf breaks free from the trees—
slowly, lento, or quickened by the autumn wind
in a silent, free fall without a parachute—
I can already hear the currents of life within the branches,
plotting the explosive budding of spring.

Peering into the genome of living beings,
we decipher a coded language containing the meticulously laid-out data
of our very selves—a script wondrous, vivid, intelligent, harmonious.
By it, we are distinct, unique as snowflakes—
crystalline, hexagonal in symmetry,
each defined by its own structure and form:
by blue, green, or chestnut eyes—all-seeing lakes;
by a nose long, elegant, upturned, or hooked,
or short and rising like an airplane into the clouds;
and by hair—wavy, straight, light, dark, golden, or cinnabar-red.
That script sets me apart from Joan of Arc or Mila Gojsalić,
from Simone de Beauvoir or Ana Horvat. We are self-reflective, self-aware beings,
able to fathom the universe in the heights that grow irrevocably—
like a flame of love spreading unstoppably into a blaze of color—
and the universe within ourselves, from the rolling of eyes in the cradle
to graying hair and steps fading into a wisp of mist;
able to perceive other beings in their radiance and shadows,
in velvet and gold, in watercolor and oil.
To rest upon ferns, moss, and spring blossoms,
on rippled waters, birch groves, and snows,
amidst birdsong, murmurs, the rustle of reeds, and the scent
of sunflowers, or within the poetry of distant, dreamy poets—
as if in net swings
hung between Golden Delicious trees.

Everywhere, the plan and handwriting of life,
everywhere, signaling new springs.