Jostling Playfully

No graven image

However gilded
Carved in marble and lime stone
Adorned in gold leaf
And rubies

Can touch the ever flowing
Uncapturable liquidity
Ephemeral beauty of this

This beauty is you

And the solidity kept slipping through his fingers
The tighter he held on to it

Nails digging into the palms
Bleeding holes in the sides
And dripping life away
At the feet

Stagnant pools
Reflecting images of an Adonis

Pale mirages
Of what once had been
Mired in weeds

Death swallowed by winter
Laying fallow
Never able to see
Revival by spring

And lotuses bloomed alongside
In whites and purple and pinks

Plucked in bushels by the village urchins
Wading through the quagmire
Piled up in the coracles in heaps
They dragged behind them

And the women sat in the market place
Belting out their wares
To the passing gentry

Sold and bought
In colourful festivity
Alongside marigold and garlands of jasmines

And death jostled playfully
Alongside the living
And a heady perfume
Rent the air

And the lotuses found themselves
At the feet of deities
Adorning images of images
Cast in stone

Not even marble could capture
Nor the skilled hands of Michelangelo

This flowing

Ever emerging
Ever receding

Blooming
Wilting

Flowing tapestry