All That There Is

Find me

I’ll be waiting in the forest

Where no light finds the branches

Of the mangled dying trees

Yet insects buzz with certainty

That they will not die today

Even when the sun has deserted them

And the cold wind

Burns their icy souls

And the stale air pierces their shriveled lungs.

Dogs cry out in the night

But what is night and what is day

When there’s never any light

In this forest without a soul

Without a breath of life

Besides the insects that lie in wait

Inside the gutted, dying trees

As they wilt and tilt and block our way.

Your voice hovers

And I listen for the gasp

When you run out of oxygen

Because the dying, crying trees will take it

And the insects will hide it

Like they hid our souls

In the cold and desolate hollows

Of the old and dying trees.

And you want to hear the truth

As the wind carries it on a whisper

From the cracked and chapped lips

Of our friends the trees

And our loves the insects.

But when it penetrates your ears

You fall in despair

Because the truth is not truly what you wanted to hear

And it never was

Nor will it ever be

Because the truth is

That we are dead

And this is all that there is.

Trees and insects and you and me

And the total absence of oxygen

And the absolute absence of light.