LIE DOWN
Lie down with your belly to the ground,
like an old dog in the sun.
Smell the greenness of the cloverleaf,
feel the damp earth through your clothes,
let an ant wander the uncharted territory of your skin.
Lie down with your belly to the ground.
Melt into the earth’s contours like a harmless snake.
All else is mere bravado.
Let your mind resolve itself in a tangle of grass.
Lie down with your belly to the ground, flat out, on ground level.
Prostrate yourself before the soil you will someday enter.
Stop doing. Stop judging, fearing, trying.
This is not dying, but the way to live in a world of change and gravity.
Let go. Let your burdens drop. Let your grief-charge bleed off into the ground.
Lie down with your belly to the ground and then rise up with the earth still in you.