Giants

A poem about life and death and time and decay

My backyard

I wrote this poem more than ten years ago when I was in college. I can’t remember what first inspired it, but I still love the imagery.

---

GIANTS

Leaves of the long-dead variety
drift over me on a sigh of wind,
a dry contrast to the moist bed
of earth beneath my limbs.

Above me, I see the trees
arching toward one another, bowing
like the ribs of sleeping giants
whose flesh has withered to nothing.

I hold my breath 
and will myself still.

The stillness intoxicates.
Beckoning branches sway 
with a slowness that is unafraid. 
I long to enter the current in which 
they exist. Life and death
mingle in that river, turning over
one another in the flow.

I inhale once more, matching my breaths
to the whispers of the wood. My cells
resonate with secret revelations. I could
remain here for eternity, until my body 
is no more than a mess of bones, until
beetles and worms make a palace of my skull.

Giants within giants.

If you enjoy Letters on Being, please consider sharing it or upgrading to a paid subscription. The regular weekly(ish) letters will always remain free, but paying subscribers also get access to two monthly bonus series: Monthly Considerations and The Sad Poets Society. Your support ensures the continuation of this newsletter and helps bring more art into the world.

WEEKEND POTPOURRI:

• Currently on repeat:

• A(nother) poem:

OZYMANDIAS

By Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”