Journal # 20

The Cycle of Life

From the moment of conception, a life beings.  We are swaddled in the darkness of wombs, weather we be cuddled in the damp soil of the earth, or the mother of our beginning. We are birthed. Breaking through the soil and winding up into the waiting sunlight, or sucking in our first breathe, cherishing the feeling of lungs being filled for the very first time. We analyze our world. Opening up our leaves to the waiting sky, or opening our very eyes to view the place we will inhabit for our short eternity. We go out. We rise-- in height, in spirit, and in maturity, stretching to the deep expanses-- whatever we can reach. Our bodies and  tender branches elongate,   and we reach for anything--everything-- that we can. We take in the air, the water--our life source--flowing from the rivers and into our trembling hands. We are nurtured, weather it be from our parents or the gentle rays of the glowing sun. Our vessels grow. They reach for the sun, hands open wide, legs  and roots firmly planted into the earth. We are young. Energy flowing from our thirsty veins. Strength coursing through our corded muscles. Life bursting from our skin and into the world around us. We live. Create a name for ourselves. Make our existence known. But  as we reach the end of this phase in life, and we have drunk the nectar of youth and our taste buds can no longer relish it's tang, we stop growing. We recede. The process  is slow, grueling. Continuous.  Just as we grew, so our bodies sink. We continue our life, nurturing our wasting bodies, doing with what we have. Limping our way through our earth, saddened by the truth revealed to us: We cannot stay here forever. Our souls will tire of our weary bodies. We will ache for more. For a place beyond this place where paradise waits for us. Some of us will pull. We will exhaust our selves tearing away from  our destiny. We will make it worse. The strain and the ripping and the tearing will break us. We will go fighting. Calling out to the sun. To the Earth. To our mothers. Cursing them for letting us live so that we will die and glitter into nonexistence again. And some will glide into Death's embrace with their arms open. Melancholy and trembling. But willing. They will not be alone. As they go into the realm where life meets death, they will pass by others. Walking. Waiting. Remembering.  Just like them. All have lived, and just as so, all must die. All have felt the warmth of the sun upon their skin, the taste of youth and the flowing water of  rivers. All have inhaled the sweet oxygen of life, and have heard the calling of the crow each morning. And just as so, all must hear the beckoning of Death when she comes. So we remember our lives. The birth of our existence, the life we lived, and the recession we experienced. And with frail  limbs and bodies, we return to the Earth of which we were birthed. We have lived. We have died. And our existence has blinked away and left a beautiful impression. A legacy. An impression of who we once were.