Post Ceremony Blues - Prose

Post Ceremony Blues

A week ago I lived in the trees

And the animal spirits
Spoke frankly with me…

But now I have bid them a tearful goodbye

And as they watch from their invisible cover
Solemnly, with serious demeanor
(So different from their natural state)
I step towards the great mechanical platform,
And take several deep breaths
Of laughter
Of resolve
Of memory
Of something I knew
In my depth
As a child
And, standing on the platform
I am lowered into the poison of the culture
Into which I was born.

As long as I breathe in what my forested friends gave me

As long as I breathe in their memory at the back of my mind
(If not the front)

I am safe.

For around me float the carcasses

Leprous

Cancerous

Living-dead

Of those that breathe in the culture-

Having a faint form of godliness

But ultimately denying the power of their own Creator

At every turn

They look me hard in the eye

And bid me join them, but…

I will not.

Not this time.

My freedom from their illness has come at too high a price.

I see others, too
Similarly removed from their homes
Masks and regulators affixed
Smiling in front of displaced eyes
Souls partially extinguished
Swimming the polluted sea
Looking for land in it's midst
Knowing it's there somewhere
As long as they also remember
What keeps them in remembrance's course?

For me, the price of readmission are scars
My scars remind me to retrace my steps and then...

The memory of my wilderness laughter reminds me.

The memory of the moonrise reminds me.

The memory of my prayers remind me.

The memory of my vision reminds me. 
The memory of my peace reminds me.

The difference between the saunter of the forest

And the maniacal idiocy of the paved-over fields

Is far too great to ever return to them.

I see it all clearly, and this is my air.

So I swim here

For now

A stranger
With my air tank full of dreams and memories
Of connections made initially so long ago that they reside only
In the memory of the memory of my bones

And with my regulator firmly affixed

I breathe
In and out
In and out
In and out
Laying low
Waiting to come back to the surface
Of where I belong
To the company of my family
The family of All That Is-
Represented to me this time by
Owl
Ouzel
Rabbit
River
Bear
Berry
Sky
Skunk
And myriad other Beings

For we are all together
Somewhere in the future
Somewhere in the past
Somewhere in the Now

A spider’s silk attaches us
All to all
And it glistens
Smiling in the teary dew.

--Eric Marley

July 2012