Alive in Death

I.
We begin as silhouettes kneeling in the dark tide of the world,
our hands sifting through soil that remembers more than we do,
grit warm as breath, cold as truth, clinging to our fingers like the remnants of old vows.
Cultivating becomes a ritual of uncertainty,
a slow, stubborn coaxing of green possibility through the cracked mouth of winter.
Even nurturing is an act of surrender, leaning close enough to hear the tremor of a buried seed,
patient as someone listening for a voice returning from the edge of weather itself.

II.
And when gathering comes,
it does not bring gentle fruit, but artifacts of the heart’s interior storms:
a bundle of glass marbles fogged from years of held breath,
a cluster of tarnished brass keys o doors we once locked for our own survival,
a folded paper crane softened by the oils of too many second chances.
Experience bears these strange treasures the way an old pack animal carries
the final mile of a pilgrimage, solemn, necessary, wordless.

Wealth becomes the unbroken mind that reaches dusk without bitterness,
unburdened by what wasn’t meant to be kept.
And as the body loosens into the quiet beyond,
the heart continues, its pulse drifting like faint light through fog,
beating ethereally soft for those who wish to listen to art staying alive in death.