The Endless Edit
by Odin Roark

His life experience
Like a conifer forest
Reaching maturity’s apex
Realized real work was needed

To thin down
Or not to thin down
To clear superfluous
Or skip it over

His existence
The task of becoming
A singular statement
A completed sentence
Became obvious
Somewhere in his forties
When excess compound-complex design
Became obvious
Entangling the reveal

His sentence faltered
His self-appointed noun of power
Sought to hold ego’s domination
While revisions hid behind escape clauses
Like lifeless branches leaching sunlight
Needed for life’s growth

Not unlike the ever evolving woodland
The challenges often become
But pesky interrogatives
The maintenance of meaning
Cluttered by a lexicon’s chaparral
Always begging more attention
More refinement

In later years
The minimalist endgame
Became unrelenting discipline
What once was seed and irrigation
Now needed concise amending
Origination’s modifiers
Having served a purpose
Now required pruning
Rendering landscape’s essence
Void of unwanted rubble

Such began the delineation
Allowing the journey’s path
To become a singular distinction
Consonant and vowel
Ultimately merging its sound
Its inseparable yin and yang
Into a simple murmur from the page
A hushed cry from the saga’s wilderness

As the wind evaporated
When the breath spoke its last word
The lament barely sounded
But its resonance remained

For just as the forest
Not only hears the felling of a tree
Regardless if anyone is around
So too does the poet in all of us
Forever feel the quiet echo
Of this life successfully edited