Fall wind       leaf dance shadows flickering on the deck
sun glints through twisting trees       leaf spewing yellow
into the shadowed groves       a fine lace entwined
with butterfly wings flitting away in the gusting
into the black brown ground         moist molding decay
a skein of living death          an expiration transforming
soil to soil a black matter     overwhelming mass
overwhelming all visible cosmic reality
the unknown others        the gluon of bacteria
holding everything here             out there
together unseen as empathy is unseen
but all we have      to knit our lives together.

Black matter greater than all we see
beyond our ken       a fine lacy glue
not understood           cannot be understood
the tangle of man cannot be understood
without acceptance of the black decay
in our common soul soil          empathetic love
Ygdrasill enchanted ash tree of creation dropping leaves.

Kent Bowker 10/26/2015
(Enchanted ash, sacred to Woden, Ygdrasill’s
roots and branches spread through the universe.)