Decay

Decay

...just one part of the life cycle.

There comes a time
when a tree can no longer
stand tall as a tree
and falls to the ground.

Likewise a rock
will one day split open
and give itself to the wind,
one grain of sand at a time.

I too am being simplified,
broken down at the spiritual
as well as the molecular levels,
into my constituent pieces,
each of them a part of the whole.

---

The fertility cycle is a cycle entirely
of living creatures passing
again and again through birth,
growth, maturity, death, and decay.
~ Wendell Berry