1. Remember that time is a circle
Pull purple petals from flushed puffs of clover.
Begin counting. Lay in long grass, allowing
ants to mount the obstacle of your body. No matter
how you hurry, you will always land exactly where you are.
2. You will likely take it all for granted
Study dandelions: the way their brilliant cadmium heads
lust after yellow, then long to be everything, everywhere,
mapping the universe before bursting the constellations
of their faces, to pursue eternity.
3. At some point, you will want to live forever
Even fallen leaves remain to play out their full and final
decay. The mineral core of human bone hollows with age,
like a drying gourd we persistently shake at the sun,
praying to dance just one more day.
4. It will be excruciating
The living through it all, people you love littered
like limbs in your wake, as if you were a hurricane,
as if you never meant to carry everyone, always.
No one learns to say goodbye gracefully; we are compelled.
5. There are things you will say
You can never pull back, sound is not solid as rope
thrown into heaven to lasso god, it lingers, elusive,
loops its frequency forever, flicking past galaxies,
seeking stars so dark, even memory dies—
the only place our words cease to matter.
6. When you get lost (which is not possible)
Go outside and listen to stars, their subtle hum
will guide you home. It may sound like the song
you heard in your head, as a child—gush of ocean
swallowing shores of silky sand—this is your ancestors
singing it back, to remind you where you began.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 276, Issue 1.
Elizabeth Rae Bullmer has been writing poetry since the age of seven. Bullmer’s poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts, Peninsula Poets, Her Words, Sky Island Journal, Rockvale Review, and The Awakenings Review. Her most recent chapbook, Skipping Stones on the River Styx, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. She is a licensed massage and sound therapist and mother of two phenomenal humans, living with four fantastic felines in Kalamazoo, MI.
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