ODE AND ELEGY
The song rose first from whispers,
then a prayer, then a poem.

In our toil were we alone,
in our loves would we fall.

Join voice in this long song,
whose end outlasts us all.

I.
The heron watches from riverborn lake
two bodies wreathed in flame -
sunlight shuddering on hidden places,
on partners-in-trembling.

This old heart
makes one plea, “Go there”.
This old heart pleads “Go there, go there” endlessly.

The water flows forth again, rivergone.
The heron takes wing, blots the sun.
And memory, it’s all elegy -
an ode that’s buried deep
and come too late.

II.
Our gardens sown in rows -
petals pulled apart
were hearts unready for the light,
buds unfurled before their time.
O, the flowering, the overflowing.

With names so strong
they hid the fear of what is nameless,
we, two free cowards in blooming day, wasted it away -
the vast moment, the small lives,
of those that will not love like that again.

Upon a lonely, tumbling stone
that longs to fall into the sun
but circles it instead, worships it instead.

III.
Hazelight looms and through a window dimming
there stands a silhouette of feathers
bringing night upon it.

Go there, go there.

You are kind,
constellations, to remind
there may be patterns through distance
and patterns in time -

It’s those tapestries
we reckon, those we conceive
through thought or thread or fraying light,
though god is the black between.

And god trades only in dust.

IV.
Roused from this, my last bed,
the shape of vacancy at center.
This, the betrayal of every yearning heart -
the world as we remember.

I heed the nightmare’s cry
curving up that throat.
Old wings spread to dusk-held sky,
migrations come when seasons go.

And one lover, bare feet on black earth
follows the other -
tending every root they withered,
prayers pulled ever from tired tongue.
Every gentle moment a cascade,
o memory, cruel and alive.

Find the path, though choked,
trust the stars through ash and smoke.
Will our wounds on this earth yet close?
Will our wounds on this earth be closed?

V.
Our world is dressed in dust, in centuries lost.
Our woes, all our woes,
we sing now the long song.

No ode can be spoken, no tapestry woven,
nothing sown in a dry desert sea.
Gray, crossed limbs cling to their dead,
never budding again, never budding again.

Tread on the backs of brothers,
feast on the hearts of sisters,
carve the mountains down to thrones.
No ode can be spoken
with the names of what we’ve known.

In furrows fallow, husks of home,
in every wind through ruin whistle,
every desert made by war,
we’d seen the hourglass.

We’d seen the sands amass.

VI.
But behold, before me is green!
The flowering, the overflowing,
grasses growing wild over graves.

And one lover, returned to black earth,
is followed by the other. Who tears roots from ground,
who curls horizons into tunnels,
whose howls echo on tumbling stone.
Where unlight gathers.

Unname me, unbathe me,
at long last we shall let the
earth take its prey.

Flesh falls free, sinew loses hold.
Without body do we unfold.

Hearts that are ready now for the horror
will transform. The tapestry torn,
all the heavens come spilling through.

VII.
A garden, once made, will
change beyond its keeping.
No thing woven will hold against time.
This elegy, o, cruel and alive,
hold all our cries. All our cries -
a song, longer than any end,
brings us to creation.

But as breaths slow in tandem
by a living river, a still lake,
the song, it slips from hearing.

A heron, from oblivion
calls out. A final lovetorn note,
herald only of the silence to come.