My poem, “Destiny,” now appears in the poetry anthology, Contemporary Poetry, Vol. 4, edited by Pradeep Chaswal and Deepak Chaswal (2017), 24-26.
DESTINY
I feel
blown away
like a dry leaf.
Now the rain begins
to fall
on my crackling
skin, so that it softens,
and I cling to the loam
dark as night
beneath me.
I feel
myself
disintegrating,
becoming one with the dirt,
sinking into the earth.
I feel the tender, slender roots
from a nearby patch of grass
reaching into me –
I feel
a dandelion seed.
What will we become,
this tiny seed and me,
entwining in the dark
under the earth
where no one else can see?
When the rain stops,
when my former shape
is unrecognizable,
when I am spread out
and taken in,
when I can’t speak
in the usual way, when the vocal-chord veins
in my skin can’t be played
like a harp, by the wind, the wind I love,
the wind I remember so well,
when I grow
through the new life
of a flower
pushing herself
through the soil to the sun,
opening her green self
to become her yellow self,
feeling the light
to transform into her white self,
clean and pure –
who will I be?
Will the wind come back
and blow through me,
scattering me again,
for the sake of someone else’s wish?
Jane Beal
SANCTUARY POET 