The Canoe

The light will break you,
pierce you through and find
all the cracks, in a garden chair
beneath the endless stars
as desert sands stretch out
forever before you,
big and cold and empty
and lit by all the holes in the sky
which speak of who we once were
and how we might, one day, be better.

I’ll sit here next to you
watching your coal-black hands
as you pick at the collected dust
beneath your fingernails and marvel
at how knowing helps nothing,
how it will lead you nowhere
near this far away kingdom.

I will watch you dance,
flames reaching for your face
as if it were through fire
that we can come to feel again
our way back, our eyes unused
to the settling night, having forgotten
that there is no balance up here;
that the light always wins,
even if it has to shatter you
ten thousand times and more.

So be broken, old friend,
full of holes and memories
of what might have been,
let the past shine through you
in vast maps like this music
of where we’ve been
and where we’ll go next,
together,
an old canoe and a simple current
to carry us where we’ve always
meant to be.

Traces

Resolution

Hold On