Can you fold love like
so many linens
and store it till your
heart has learned
to fly again?

Will broken wings
one day remember the
burning, diamond sea
that gave them birth

before the rebellion,
before the fall,
on the day I first believed
in candlelit Autumns
that never turn to snow.

Origami clouds, folded, unfolded . . .
dreamscapes turned inside out
and shaped into albino replicas
of living things;

easy to watch,
easy to understand,
a sky so pure it washes sin
like some new Messiah.

But I still can’t fly
and you still have something
that belongs to me.

You left the bones of trees
rattling in the wind
and they are quickly
losing faith
in Resurrection.

I lie down and strain to
read the sky,
and at the edge of the page
is one cloud,

changing and changeless,
and lost
at the bottom
of blue.


© Patricia Joan Jones