Partake
The Dream-Being Cycle of Definement
A Collaboration between Anna Rozwadowska & Erika Burkhalter
(Originally published in Literally Literary)

Bent in dimensions crooked little flower,
you are magnificent in how raw you become
stripped of your armour; naked, mitigated,
migratory birds start eternity, flesh unimbued,
chemistry of open air determines freedom solitude,
equations of etheric balm, space out the moon.
Wheels turning, like ferns unfurling,
the cycle of life catches us all in her cogs.
From the birth of the tender green nub,
to the spraying of feathered fronds, brown tassels at their tips,
time nips at our heels,
crying like the loon
dipped in the sundrenched shallows of the sunset,
waiting for the birth of another day.
Sometimes, we escape to see another spring.
And, sometimes, we curl in,
unsure of where to begin the next set of steps in nature’s,
intricate, dance.
And sometimes, all that is left is to retreat and begin anew,
waltzing in the wind of a new reality.
And the spiral carries on; gathering astronomical particles,
that feed the atmosphere and the joining of souls.
And those birds, rising to the moon, their silhouettes ink black in the pearly stream, where do they fly?
Will they be there when we die?
Or, when we sigh with rapture, their flutters rising,
carrying us higher and higher, until we cry, and fall again
into a new, naked, raw, identity?
Directful is the abyss, cringe at the surmise it is the final kiss;
lover’s paradise, tingle, hurt, tinge, hurt, vibration, hurt, escalation, hurt,
peace loved the dwellers of history, in time avocation of notes,
made into poems, made into pieces of art where creativity is Supreme,
all being; look through your eye, see thy true-self, lift all illusion,
naked you stand, seeking appraisal for staring down your walls,
fuschia wrapped in gold leaf, leaf, leaf, praise the leaf; bellows in nature,
creatures of brethren, confused yet solid for your appearance is mandatory,
you soul-self is a mission, balm of frankincense and amber rupture, you break:
it is time to partake, holi is a celebration of light being, colour demands its force,
it is time to partake.
Anna Rozwadowska & Erika Burkhalter 2019