The Way Life Flows

The Way Life Flows

First published as the poem "How Things Stand" in the dos-a-dos collection "Amor Novus / A Spontaneous Prayer", a work combining chapbooks written by me and David Hay.

All my death-as-life

I’ve been running, and

I’ll always, like water coursing

through rivers to the sea and

becoming rain.
 

That’s just the way life flows,

the cycle of my being.

So, let's flow, and trickle,

and dry up, pelt down, pool,

follow whichever way

the air sways to,

obey the rhythm

that shapes everything,

live and die, live, die,

and embrace all this rebirth.

When we live, we flow.

For all the sadness

they call life,

I fled every joy,

every chance to smile.

But now, I live.

So, I'll run to the shape

of the eternal river of existence,

or the ocean, the downpour,

whichever way life flows,

and let myself pour,

wave, and stream,

without renouncing,

never refusing to surrender

to the course of every rhythm.