Only one of them, the beloved, would be clueless and self-absorbed, inclined to foibles and easily distracted
A regular
Flibbertigibbet!
But the Other One—
He would always be true.
Only one of them, the beloved, would be clueless and self-absorbed, inclined to foibles and easily distracted
A regular
Flibbertigibbet!
But the Other One—
He would always be true.
Think about it.
Your darkest night
Your loneliest moment
The here-and-there times when it is either your own
Life or the life of the beloved
Taken from you
Faith I get
Love anchors
But it is my squint-into-the-sun-reticence about hope
Which drives me to speak
Of mountains.
Today darling the mountains
Are all shaped like crowns
Crowns of thorns or flowers,
The braided laurels of an imperial victory
He said, it is finished beneath these crumbling mountains
And I will wait, sometimes in tears
To see them all
Thrown into the sea.
I was there when you packed your bags, when you got the passport pictures, (the garrulous postal employee who took them was a highlight!). I was there for all the worry–the mama worry–and there for the day when we drove to the airport all together
To see you off to
Great Adventure!
Despite all my trepidations, I was excited for all of you. I thought this will be cool and said take lots of pictures!
I went in with my eyes wide open
Too many emails back and forth with grownups
getting paid a lot to take you there
Not Mothers Teresas at all
But I didn’t expect this
The lonely road home
The uphill battle just to get you back home
You are home now, darlings
And never let anyone tell you
You are worth anything less than the whole world entire
I would tell you
If I could stand in every airport in the world
Homemade Sign held high and goofily askew
Letters spelt out–
💜WELCOME HOME, ANTARCTIC EXPLORERS!!💙
You mean the world to me


I wake with your feather weight along my sternum, papoosed across
My spine
I mourn my inability to save
You from this uncertain and inevitable
Loss
Take you with me everywhere
Haunt me, girl-child
Make me do
impossible things
for love
Long before our terrible story your birthday was already
the feast of Servites pruning winter roses. I cling to that now, all the other days this day could be:
Obstinate mountains lumber into obeisant seas
Lame men whole, blind men see
Dead men rise and shake off their shroudy bindings
impossible things all around ya
If only you will
See
Not often enough
Do I think about the light I cannot see
The whole beings made of it who
Could be standing right beside me
defined by light not visible to me
Or smell, or touch or sound or taste
All senses which could be
Stronger somehow–
A male polar bear can smell a mate from 100 hundred miles away
Sharks can smell single droplets of
Blood in the water miles away
What portion of my human brain is cordoned off for
My sense of Love? How far, how long, how wide a net
Will you cast for me?
What if God were just twice as smart as you? Twice as nice. Twice as precise. Would you worry then, Darling?
Worry about the things He would tell you
Before, not after, the flood
The possibility of both
Righteous anger and a casual
Ordinary
Blast of glory
Refuting all the
niggling details of narcissism
And all your little monsters
Eyeing you hungrily from their corners
Waiting to take all
The clues, the love-notes, the blazing stars
He has strewn about this place
Only hope for
Ransom.
The argument was about space-time manipulation. Wouldn’t he be able to fix them immediately? Couldn’t he move things instantly, not just travel between times? I like to think of you, in the room with the baby girl, talking in words only children can understand
About how lonely and strange the world might be
Without a best friend/just/like/you
First of all, let me reiterate that I do not expect you two to go the distance–not that prophetic considering where you are today and the inauspicious nature of this ceremony of disaster.
Most weddings are full of shi…..ps, little paper boats people fold along seams, scribble on, and push out onto whatever river they believe in. They write platitudes for the pain, use costly words all wrong.
Then the little boats float off
Leaving you there at the altar, no more substantial than cake topper avatars
Not ready for this:
Loves fierce resolve
To begin and end/end and begin
Together.
Years ago a man who fought fire told me that the hot center of it is black, vortex dark, a hole you could fall into and never stop
Falling
There is no fire without burning, I tell the children, each sun a metaphor for something
Something bigger than us
Something bigger than them
Than all the worlds of burning
Light reaching back to us
Saying something
Maybe in Morse code
Flashlit messages exchanged through neighboring windows by children in the night
You are…eternal