Elemental

Wild child, breezing through
the passing days, twigs caught
in my hair, I rode
the back of the north wind,
her spirit child.

No one ever told me
those swiftly disappearing
days would be here
and gone, burned away
in a flaming instant.

For what do flames need
most to feed them
but air?

The kinesis of roiling
atoms that once informed
my being became one man’s
food, and I nearly disappeared,
subsumed within the fire.

On my knees in cindered
supplication, water revived
and cleansed me, and I
evolved once again, a fish
darting in gleaming shimmers.

Slip-sliding through currents,
another gently supported,
behind, below, around, held
but not restrained by the water
bearer’s caressing hands.

One day it will come,
my final being, a child
of the earth at last, coming home.
The once sustaining waters
will flow, trickle, and slow.

For what will my own wild
child need? I will feed
that which feeds my children.