Soul Searching

She carries me, my soul.

My aching, tired bones wrapped in weathered skin

that sheds and thins and fades like

pages torn of overuse and reading myself over

and over.

She will carry me along the curvature of the earth

into time and across my life

until there is nothing left but my spine.

I am an infant in her infinite arms

and I lull to sleep as she swaddles me

like the mother I once knew.

I am her, my soul, but she often eludes me

in the shadows of the deep black-green,

in the creek of my childhood,

in the spruce trees of my scraped elbows,

in the dirt of my dead ancestors.

She has been bare breast and proud chest.

Traits of Eve and Adam,

the eater of the apple and the resistor of temptations.

She has sailed over thousands of seas.

She killed and was killed and watched die,

so many.

She is both Lilith and Virgin Mother.

Fruit and worm

She eats of the sweetness of life and consume its sugars

until rot feeds the dirt to return again.

I have only a time to learn her ways,

to reach out my hand and touch her face.

I will sail seas and die to become her

until I fade into the deep black-green

I will pursue her —

My soul, my mother, me.