Alive

Each day I fight because I am alive.
You cannot fight, if dead—you cannot see
the gleaming beetle’s silky wings display
the quiet beauty of each transparent
cell, crafted like the breathing trees that tell
me what they felt when God gave them a pulse.
The dead don’t hear true glory in the rush
of sparkling streams that push round tiny rocks,
or grumbling leaves that make way for the moss
that grows like a fingerprint in the dirt.
The dead do not hear—they close their eyes.
I fight to see the shadow of the hand
that gathered the earth
and made me
alive.