Break Forth

An inner coming away, beginning over again,
an outer rending, cracked in twain.
Thin, flaky crust of earth pie,
four and twenty red-wings rise to cerulean sky.
A birth, a break forth into song,
dragon-scale shedding, clawing along.
Molting, shutting the cold, old, yesterday’s door,
the sap-blood flowing once sweetly more.
The moving thickly, freshly born,
an emptied womb, a broken shell, forlorn.
Death awakes as life.
Flesh pink, scraped clean by ice-cold knife.
A besetting weight not easily scorned,
a gray emptiness, pain’s barrenness not mourned.
White and black birth, joy over green,
emptiness brings eyes to fullness, keen.
Torn away, rent, broken through,
clawed, sloughed, tapped, brand-new.

Header photograph © Jason D. Ramsey.