Promised Matter

I’m writing to tell you I found them,
the flowers that sleep in the sky
without dying
and that I’ve carried them with me
ever since that day,
not knowing what else to do,
because it all came true.

Every single word we wrote,
walking down this beach
with no idea that we were singing
in the heart of a songline far older
than us: the scorpio moon,
the psychotic dancing of bees,
the love songs of a sinner.

Every breath since you left
has been scripted, signed off,
and so I’ve feared coming back here:
living in its fullness the power of words
and wondering what I can bear
to write next, until even the old songs
I love listening to jam in the reader,
right when there’s a Catholic priest
in a crisis, torn between romance and Jesus,
who will win the civil wa- …?

When it is heresy to speak,
madness to keep silent,
still you come back to me and whisper
of the parallel shafts of sunlight
that support whole cathedrals
and how we found one moment of true love,
left for us on the empty sands
and how you knew we’d have to let it go,
and how we still lived it
and lost it and laid our pride down.

All because you knew I’d keep my promise,
that I’d write you this note, wring from it
the few drops of truth outside time,
carve them into words that will
this world to spin back, so I can
give you a strange bunch of flowers
which is forever in bloom,
and smile at you,
because what we wrote mattered,
just once, and that is enough for me.

Traces

Love

The Dancing

Light

Babe