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Cycle
by Benjamin Beckman

I am dust born anew and of revolutions faded away,
the sky and the heavens above,
the cycle turning the Earth daily.

Sun, why do you set?
Why does your joy depart from the world when you die?
Why are we dark and cold?

Why do the tides turn about the moon,
waxing and waning,
traversing a deep river of time?

This grass rises and falls in a great pattern of seasons and time.
Why so? the insects and critters and creatures and small things ask,
their home vanished once the frost approaches.

It is because:
She is the inanimate... the rolling slap of the water on the shore
She is the land... destroyed in violence
She is the wind... flying past open seas
the sprout... verdant, growing towards the sun
the fire... destroying the sacred, nurturing the holy
She is all that cycles.

All nature is cyclical to your perception.
She turns,
as the moon turns
and the sun turns,
and the planets turn,
or the shorelines,
or the seasons,
or the birds’ migrations:

Nature follows her, and she follows nature....
The sun rises when she rises, and she rises when the sun rises...
The moon climbs as she falls, and she falls as the moon climbs...
and when it has ended,
I return to the dust from where I came.