Element

This is Fire.

She hovers untamed in the sky
or compliant in your hearth.
She breathes your skin to warmth
or wrestles with the wrath of smoke
and the gods of destruction,
Erotic, boundless energy
that ravages and cleanses and leaps into life, 
Life into leaf,
from ashen ground 
and newly discovered sky. 

This is Air.

He whispers the beginning of all things deep into the present.
His fingers stroke your face with memory of those first breaths
and scents from lands where your feet will never tread. 
He carries the purring of wings and the kiss of your exchange with the trees.
Ceaseless roaming that bends to no will
but the earth’s sweet rotation
 and the cloud’s ecstatic sigh.

This is Water.

She tips from the sky into your throat and your flesh,
selfless source of your strength today and your restless tomorrows.
She whirlpools among the wild gods
and laughs with the mountains and the waves and the seeping stream through the stones. 
She carries your burden.
She floats it to sea and she drinks it, saltily, 
as you plash along in your pain and your release.
She ebbs your dreams and she flows your fears,
And she sings in droplets on your face.

This is Earth.

He is sleeping now, beneath your tired creature body.
He wakes to caress the soles of innumerable feet 
and nourish the countless tendrils of life
that are bound to him, and bound by him,
and hold him as you wish to be held.
He dreams in plants and rock,
that thrust upwards to seek fire and water and air 
and to know you as you are,
as you hope to be;
Sound as the earth which helps you stay grounded

And to rise.