In my tiredness

and willingness to rest

I slipped so far down

I felt the earth

embraced me

and knew me once again.

I became

compressed by earth

a single drop of water

Slipping through

small crumbs of soil

to an earthy darkness

where my breath unbound.

In those deep

soils of rest

I fell again

unbinding more

to those strange

pathways

where many waters

meet in slow descent

to the place in meeting

where we rise again

becoming in the spiral rise

this longing for the surface.

Out of shallow springs

I float into the first

hours of night.

Becoming as I leave

slow streams and ponds,

a haunt of lilies, and so become

again the unknown child

looking for a gift

to give his mother.

All night I work,

dreaming, hands in the water,

harvesting the white flowers of sleep.