No one knows how long they last,
no one understands how they divide the days,
no one knows that life is their embrace.
From this balcony of even heartbeats
I can see the hilltop and the garden.
My father is splitting wood.
Sound of sledge on wedge.
My father is younger than me. Now
I understand everything.
Your life is their embrace. Like two serpents
coiled. Beginning and end. The day
when I can explain how I loved
and longed to love. Coiled chains.
You will see in my hand
the knot of fire that explains everything.
One day I’ll walk and walk. But my steps
will be short and fit inside the knot of fire
whose heart with hurt throbs. You’ll see
the steady burning of a patience without limits,
something that grows incessantly inward
and brings me here to say ‘Luck!’
It’s spring and they don’t ask me to come along.
Summer and they say farewell promising to remember.
Autumn and we don’t walk together. Winter
and there are no words. Spring again and time
reveals the law of a futile persistence. Summer
and what once was watered now constitutes
a symphony of avid dust. Winter
and I’ll tell you what I’ve been through for a crust.
I’ll tell you about that great fire that conserves
the power to love without limit. What drought
holds up the air in its warm and caring hands,
if your silence is the religion I seek. A silence,
but silence only of your voice,
union of the noise of all things.
Nothing, nothing. It’s nothing.