Dying Original Painting by Adrianne Tamar

24" x 36" oil paint on wood panel

“Dying”
________

Do I know the Earth I’ll return to?
I’m going to spend far longer
Buried beneath it
Then I ever will
Moving on it’s surface.
As I walk this road
Dying, towards death,
And move deeper and deeper
Down, down, down,
Into layers of the underneath,
I pass the bones of everything
That once walked, breathed, and hunted

And, I remember
that I am just bones, myself
Briefly animated in flesh
Soon to return
To the marrow of history,
The sinew of the future
And ultimately,
The great beneath.
As my bones join the millions of bones
That have gone before me
Perhaps,
If I die well,
I will learn that dear things
Lives, and stories,
Are never gone
Just buried

In an eternal archive
That is the heart
Of the Earth itself.
_______