Soul weary. She feels it all. beneath her worn sneakers and too high arches, a quickening. The earth’s arrhythmic pulse. They who follow her shallow footprints gouge their own eyes and plead congenital blindness. Along the cobbled path, she becomes reluctant mother to adult children.
Soul weary. No annual or compassionate leave to grieve ecological collapse, her country a crematorium for marsupials and monotremes she never knew, folding into burned scrub, while birds fall featherless into a reverse phoenix fire, each species’ death a faded footnote of Anthropocene history.
Soul weary. They call her way-shower instead Of wayfarer, But they’ve always pronounced her name wrong, those who plug their ears and cry deafness. those who follow but forget they have feet. All she ever wanted was to travel buoyant in a worldspace so dense that any light is victory.
Soul weary. Let her rest a moment, let her crawl into the undergrowth of the casuarina cathedral, a dying mammal seeking solace in a narrow space. And may the Cormorants and Great Egret, which sit atop this pine steeple wake her from deathless sleep. Otherwise, let lichen spread skin-wise, let blood turn to algae and fungi cushion her feet.
Word upon Word 