Understory

I am breathing in the night,

waiting for the breath
that will open in me like a
night-blooming flower,
a breath that will blow through my body
to clean it of the cobwebs
in its corners
and the must in the wood
of my bones.

I am waiting
not for a wind, but a breath
that is light enough to leave the
mushrooms and moss that sprout
on the soft stone of my heart
and grow from within my mouth –
I have been cultivating them
invisibly
for years.

There is a seedbed
that can only be woken by fire;
it burns in the understory
under mind
under heart
in the dark earth of my body.
Branches of light and leaf-shadow
will one day pierce my canopy
like a river
like lightning
like a night heron catching dreams,
and a forest will grow inside me.

I am breathing in the night,
hand cupped against the wind and
tinder bundled close and dry –
breathing on an ember,
a single ember
that has not gone out.