Like summer, you were a
green haze
between endings.

Like winter, you were
diamonds in
the tomb.

I would take any one
of those dismantled
memories now,
refurbish it
and slip into it
like life-changing
knowledge,

and this time I might
even remember to
say "I love you"
although sometimes
I just loved
the idea of love,

the feral madness of love . . .

and perhaps that's
Heaven enough for
earthbound explorers
tripping over each
other in this
marvelous, earthy
stupor,

and, well, any love
seeping though the
pinholes of our
humanness is
sanctified.

That green mist
swells into focus
until the world
lives again
in chic robins,
suspicious squirrels
and a pond,
a new concoction,
groggy and black and
rebrewed every hour.

Folds of our sky
laze upon it.

Indoors a part of you
lives a weary,
golden life
and another part
waits for me with
baffling patience.

All you
ever wanted were
droplets of devotion
because you realized
before I did:
everything's a shadow
until it's shared.

I could fall through
this wind forever—
how it takes sweat
and damaged pride
with it as it pulls
away from
my body.

It's a simple
type of kindness
I can accept. Easily.
I'll carry it
back to my
other life where
some things
can be paused
with a remote control
and some things
can be put aside,

but not what
truly matters.

In the softness of
our fossilized quiet,
the past a cathedral
behind us,
its spires chiseled
bit by bit into
pieces,
crumbling or glorious
depending
on the day,

I listen
to my true self

and reach for your hand.


Patricia Joan Jones