Out in the woods. From the bosom of the oldest bard, a place of knowing older than any language. Deep in the metropole of trees. A sound ponces from limb to limb, scraping along scales of bark until it reaches a clearing and scatters like buckshot. A force as sharp and determined as the gust of a blizzard. Cold and cutting, but only towards the accesses that cling to you, like barnacles to the shell of a baby sea turtle. It means to trim away your debts. A jubilee of dizzying, incisive modulation. Shoring the bad and broken feathers and leaving only those that are light and fine as the flame of a candle. You will become weightless. Like smoke. Released from the jealous pull of the Earth, you will be lifted toward the loving regard of an ever-watching eye. Unblinking and unclouded, it will guide you in induction into a court of mercy without illusion of judgment. Like a wild strain of cardamom, you will sail and savor and be savored, dissolved and condensed and inculcated in fresh flesh and incomprehensible forms. Drifting back on a river of delicate budding gratuities, you will come to rest again amongst the trees, now no less their kin. Endowed with their wisdom you are as their trustee, counsel, confidant, and earnest friend. Footsteps in the foliage. A ramble without destination. Never imposing a trace by its passage. A rustle without a sound.
