Alive

at midnight,
moonbeams crisscross,
building a silver hammock
over the somnolent lake,
she stretches at last,
unbuttoning life, slowly,
one reluctant clasp at a time,
reality pooling like indigo silk at her feet,
seeping into the detritus of time and space,
just the singular drama of her breath,
not alive, an evanescent animation,
like a breeze slipping in and out of the first spring leaves;

a channel,
between earth and sky,
reading their unsent messages,
feeling their forces harmonize
along her star encrusted frame,
the smell of ancient alluvium
rising like a ghostly stalagmite,
swallowing all context,
shrouding the mystery of being,
nothing can exist, without moment and place,
just the odd spectacle of her breath,
masking her absence,
like a question, a prayer falling with the early rain.

For Poets United where the midweek prompt is “The inanimate and the non-human”