I once was a coconut

I remember this one distant time

when I was a fluttering butterfly;

avoiding those angry bees

and hiding among the trees.

Within these trees I flapped and flew

remembering once, I had also been a canoe;

and even the old man found inside paddling

and will forget it all as a baby in swaddling.

That thought carried me into the wind

and suddenly I was human who was running;

bare feet barely touching dead leaves

as if the Laws of Physics weren’t governing.

The air caressed me as flora moved aside

and scent of the Earth was thick in my breath;

I was not alone, as others ran among me

and the hairs stood up on the nape of my neck.

I, unlike them, flowed through the forest

and saw the path before me, even as I took it;

though running from those who would cage me

I felt no fear, only the central urgency to book it.

I was needed somewhere and more than fast

and I was like a liquid running through the trees;

something inside me shifted with the thought

and the forest sighed through it’s leaves.

The wind smiled through the canopy

in a song that I could hear but not see;

Sea. I was suddenly reminded of the ocean

while I ran, in my mind it was the sand and me.

A shore I was familiar with

and the sea’s kiss upon my toes;

Liquid. Sunet. Time.

How long will this take, no one knows!

As I looked up in wonder of the sky

I was then free of my physical bonds;

carried by thought and simply airborne-

Air Born. Star Dust. Particles in energy ponds.

Whether transformed by thought

or thought transformed by form;

I was a cloud above the trees

and just quietly drifting along.

Seeing in 360 degrees

and everything was suddenly bigger;

in my gasp I collapsed

and became a raindrop of matter.

Plummeting to the forest below

with a liquid lens of distorted sense;

still, I had no real fear of my falling

and not bracing for any defense.

As the wind whistled by

in a symphony of angels screaming;

I realized that I wasn’t alone

and I wasn’t the only raindrop falling.

Perhaps it was a raindrop’s perceptive

or maybe my own awareness condensing;

but I could of swore I was falling faster

and the impending impact became distressing.

In the moment before collision

I remembered my former lives;

and when I hit the ground

I splattered forth with the will to survive.

So strong and so big was my will

that I found myself in the forest as fog;

among the runners who breathed me in

and suddenly noticed they exhaled a bog.

The fog that I was would not accept it

tainted by those who used parts of me;

those parts were no longer the same

changed in the time it took to breathe.

Even changed, I knew why I was going

drifting through the trees and existing in air;

but why were these people still running?

then I noticed I asked ‘why’ not ‘where?…’

I was once a coconut, right,

growing with the tides gone by;

whilst swaying in the breeze

from the top of my little tree.

It doesn’t have to make sense

when you take it in the correct tense;

we are all alive and living

but why do we keep on breathing?

-M.E.