These words are rescuers

and observers

through the insatiable thirst

of survival

that ravages the Earth

We are an invasive species

It's good to leave my thoughts

and listen to the wind

That sound in the forest

is silence's next-of-kin

At an old age

I need to lose myself in it;

stray

without inventing a god

to deprive me of compassion

I let a beetle pass,

and a summer cloud up above

I show the faces of the deceased

the honour of recognition

and posthumous relevance,

as they line up like African masks

in my wake dreams

hovering by,

lightly lifted out of the herbarium

of facial features,

into which they shall return,

slowly dissolving

like the last note in an orchestral score