They said it was a sacrifice,
but isn’t all life?
The tree pulled down to make paper to record our words
The hay threshed to fill bellies
Some say even water is alive
The clouds spilling it to the ground only to be swallowed
by some body that will eventually die
Only the bones linger
Hardened by structure
Fused to bear weight
Once stripped of the vulnerable layers they expose the effort
of resistance as a catalogue of time
We like to date our years lived
We like to think about lifetimes
in terms of expansion
The vulnerable layers we shroud
with creams and clothing designed to hide
and deny this thing we call age
But, when we strip ourselves down to what is left
Beyond the hardened bones that remind us of death
as a loss and that thing called density,
we are left with the essence itself
That bit of life that lingers over and over again
The cycle repeating itself to rebirth
in another form. Experience depends
upon this essence, as does growth and death
It is said that when the body dies,
the weight of the eternal essence can be recorded
after it leaves the form which held it close to call it a life
by itself. We can look at the dry bones and see the loss
of what once was, or we can follow the essence
back into the dance of life. Imagine
a breath of memories swirling into another form,
or perhaps dancing in eternity’s ocean
The individual heart eventually stops
That’s simply the law of nature of life in form
An idea that might make a single beating heart
skip into the throat to hide for want of eternity
of the individual. We don’t like to think
about nonexistence as we define our existence
but what of that pulse that beats through all life?
Can you feel it?
No one can say they cannot,
or have not, because
it is that essence that lingers
The before form and the after form
So you can study the bones and marvel
at the loss, or you can study the essence
that beats the eternal heart and recognize it
as your own too.

For Sue Vincent’s weekly #writephoto prompt challenge.