together in a tapestry

We are all bound together in a tapestry that like the sea gives the impression of movement 
towards something but is actually just a maternal body of material...

The flowers buzz when the vibration of the bees stimulates their pistons 
and their molecules swell and their petals hum like cellos. Rocks are alive,
 the firstborn of the natural world, somber without will.

There is no freedom from this universe we were born into, because it is our
 vague source of sensation, our soul, the container of our guilt.

Skins liquefy in heat. And when a bald baby swallow dies on your palm, 
you feel warmth pouring over your skin, a kind of burning fountain 
that scalds you like pepper spray.

Do you think this is a sign of the spirit ripping its energy into you to carry
 to the other side? I do. There are no actual objects over there, no materials
 but unformed steaming clouds, colors that harmonize musically, 
no gravity exists but elasticity composed of invisible images.

 

~ Fanny Howe
from 'The Child's Child'
The Needle's Eye: Passing through Youth