(A guest post written by Renaissance Woman Sheila Weidendorf.)
while wandering in the forest or by the lake I never went back to my life
but rather, crawled beneath the sumac and hazel
crept down amongst the bracken and dock, released, bit by bit,
my tenuous shell of bone and flesh into the loam, put on a new mantle of leaf and moss and twig, festooned myself with berries and briars or maybe,
tumbled low out of the Earth’s crevices, liquid,
poured myself into the waiting arms of the deep waters,
floated alongside the upturned faces of the water lilies
awaiting their turn to bloom or, instead, let myself sink to the bottom,
a pebble or weed, to lay with the silt, silken, and be rocked gently, gently
by the motion of the Earth beneath the waters
and what if, in doing this, I found myself to be no more
than a leaf, or a pebble, no greater than the lily or the fern,
but also, and certainly, no less.