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A man can’t die where there is no earth
because there will be no place 
to bury him. His body is the sky 
and understands the language of birds. 

His body says the earth is made of 
everything 
that has fallen from Heaven 

while no one was looking. He promises 
to defy gravity and then return home. 

A man can’t reach for the sky and not feel 
he is falling. It goes on forever and the 
birds 
talk about the awesomeness of flight 

while the oxen labor in the fields, 
while the cows eat grass and dream 

of slaughter. A man can’t talk about flight 
because one day, there will be no sky, 
just the body covered in earth. 

And now the sky is empty of birds. 
And now the earth is covered in flowers.


Where the Sky Meets the Earth, by W. Todd Kaneko