There you are
I brought flowers again

Beneath the oldest hanging vines,
where even noon becomes a dusk,
you wait beneath the dripping leaves,
covered softly by the years

A branch was bound across your chest
A horn was placed beside your hand
Someone gave you feathers once
Someone gave you human teeth

I do not know whose hands they were
I do not know how long ago
But every gift remains with you
And so do all the hands

No eyes
No lips
No little human smile
How beautiful
How kind
You never needed any

The idol has no face
No face for me to understand
No eyes that look like mine
No mouth that speaks my little words

The idol has no face
Because a face would make you smaller
You were here before the first one formed
Before the world learned how to look

Your body smells of rain and bark,
of old smoke, resin, bone and soil
Roots have grown around your feet
and beetles sleep inside your ribs

A little skull hangs from a vine
A broken antler crowns your side
Red thread curls around a stone
pressed deep into your wooden heart

I touch my forehead to the earth
I do not ask you for a sign
To ask would mean
I doubt you are here

No name
No shape
No single thing you have to be
How beautiful
How whole
You can be anything

The idol has no face
No face for me to understand
No eyes that look like mine
No mouth that speaks my little words

The idol has no face
Because a face would make you smaller
You were here before the first one formed
Before the world learned how to look

Before the eye...
Before the mouth...
Before the hand...
Before the name...
You were

They carved their gods with human cheeks,
with human shoulders, human eyes
They gave them crowns
They gave them thrones
They made the endless look like us

But why would heaven wear our face?
Why would the ancient need our bones?
Why would something without beginning
choose the shape of something small?

No...
You are older than resemblance

Perhaps the branch is part of you
Perhaps the bone is part of you
Perhaps the moss upon your back
has always been your living skin
Perhaps the hands that built you
never built you at all
Perhaps they only gathered pieces
that remembered where they belonged

Wood to bone
Bone to stone
Stone to feather
Feather to vine
Vine to flesh
Flesh to earth
And every piece says:
Here. Here. Here

No face
No name
No beginning
No end
No face
No name
No beginning
No end

Sometimes I dream you had a face
Not like mine
Not like anyone's

A face with no eyes,
yet everything was seen
A mouth with no lips,
yet everything was singing

And when I woke,
I understood
That was not your face
That was the whole forest

Wood is holy
Bone is holy
Stone is holy
Mud is holy
Feather is holy
Blood is holy
Rot is holy

Nothing is outside you
Nothing is outside you
Nothing...
is outside...
you

The idol has no face
No face for me to understand
No eyes that look like mine
No mouth that speaks my little words

The idol has no face
And now I know the reason
A face belongs to something separate
And you have never been alone
You are the branch
You are the bone
You are the moss
You are the rain
You are the little crawling things
You are the hand that touches you

And maybe...
you are me

They call you an idol
They are wrong
An idol is only an image
You are not an image of anything

You are what images
are trying to remember