How many tiny deaths

This shudder travels

through veins like
the lines that lead to leaves, retreating
leaf by leaf
once shaking releasing
then, returning,
focused and budding and unfurling —
this moment
— layer over layer
warm, yet shaking all over,
relaxed so deeply into
everything focused onto
and yet tense
and yet blurred and blinded and flooded

to be this,
both the death and the birth
same in this moment,
a pain deeper, unimaginable
pleasure, still deeper,
mirroring each other in
this endless dance,
until it ends.