Photo by Joe Parks

I lie against the pillows
in the half-light
listening to bricks shifting
mortar crumbling
in our silent home
because you have flown
far away, briefcase in hand

Often the world grows dark
All I see are angry men
and despairing mothers,
fields of upside down flowers,
skies of shredded crimson,
a march to our graves
But you are there

You open the corners of the map
show me beauty in
where you have been
what you have seen
I drown in your eyes and
the warmth of your spirit
and know the world is you

The promise of separation lurks
a deep cut where it is soft
I think of elderly lovers tracing
the contours of each other’s faces
when one is dying, and parents
saying goodbye to children
Sometimes it is too dangerous to love

If only my memory would serve me better
or I could record every moment
with a scar on my body
I’d read our story back
even if I were stripped bare
and nothing existed except
my falling body through time

If there were nobody for me to love
if I wandered alone
under churning clouds
I would gather up gravestones
knit together the buried love stories
of those who dug for joy
through perilous lives of clay

I would crumble the gravestones
mix in clumps of earth
and cells and bone,
and send them into the galaxy
to be stars and new planets
made of love and tears and human dust
to light the way for those who follow

The night sky will fold like a hammock
to give rest to the disenchanted
The stars will rain down
and bring light to counter the dark
We won’t need God or governments
or roomfuls of things, because
compassion will stitch us back together

And though we will always be broken
we won’t be alone.