(dedicated to Beth Mason)
i.
How do you keep
showing up
each day, when each day
is bereavement?
How do you lift your head
at the sight of the cold and beautiful light
standing like a child
by the foot of your bed
in need of you,
needing you present,
as she always does,
to feed and clothe and hold her close,
to keep the monsters back,
to guard the door?
How do you go on
when you wish the light didn’t need you
to illuminate the world?
How do you rise
every time the sun rises,
to face it and the shadows it creates
as one who willfully worships,
in adoration
of All that is beyond and above and within you,
All that you will never understand
and yet trust for your very life?
How do you face yourself
and the shadows you create
that bend backward to the earth
like westward crops at nightfall,
to fill and fade and fall again?
How do you take and eat
when you long ago
gave up birthrights for bellyfulls,
when you can just about taste the bread
but cannot lay your head on the breast,
when the wine smells of blood
and the blood savors like wine,
when you hunger to bear
children like the pregnant earth,
yet remain empty?
How do you
then live?
ii.
It is a cold and beautiful light
that pierces the eye, the hand, the side,
and comes away red with life,
coursing over the dawn of a soul
in baptismal torrents.
Dive deep into the
waiting well, the warm and terrible darkness
gushing forth,
the life that we struggle to grasp,
that grasps us, and holds us under.
Somewhere in the crimson sea
we will lose all will to live,
and die instead.
iii.
So I ask the greenshod world
“How is it that you come alive again?”
And it answers me:
“Smell the air, feel the soil, taste the
deepening springs beneath.
Would you not awake
to such liquid light?
Would you not leave your winter
and take new garments
upon yourself
at such a call?”
And outstretched arms
beckon me in, blooms releasing
the incense
of a long and faithful sleep.
“Come to the spring
with us, drink deep and be merry
once more,
for hope lives
and lives again.”
Then I unfurl
and come forth.