A tiny box,
that doesn't really exist,
but somehow exists, but
not anywhere, and
invisibly. You explained
this to me once, but,
you don't know: it's magic.
And there are eight worlds
here, six seperately, three
continents. She speaks with
the wisdom of one-hundred-forty-four
years-- "exclusive devotion", (but I get
lost on nightingale, imagining
statutes that shed their
snow-cold marble tombs,
winged-souls fly,
naked and unashamed.)
He describes blow after blow,
bruises conjured to the surface,
lines bent into angles,
"life is fantastically strange"
and broken down, he finds his
bearings in our blood (life is glorious)
and we love. who can know that,
without knowing, what it is to hurt?
She says "tentatively"
but I feel the way she leans into it,
aching, wanting,
"when the circle is smaller"
the strip you cut into the earth thinner,
the purple buds, the red clay,
she is saying: home.
and this one patiently, enduring love
(you will know if you know)
windows open to fields and flowers
and the sun coming in
(as it will, every morning)
space. and quietness. and you.
terrarium dreams. always, our lives
imagined old together.
"There is so much possibility....."
"Appelsbosch."
she speacks of shuttle to ship,
the dockyard (the seagulls cry,
my cold feet warm on the sand, )
Durban,
... another home that sleeps
inside this tiny body
(How can anywhere be small enough,
for the miniscule intimacy I can offer,
I want to absorb a place, inch by inch,
but where could be small enough for I?)
Top deck. Scrubbed walls. Mercy
climbing over waters, set to sail.
This name scrawls i-miss across
my heart as I read,
this one, a galaxy alone,
memory "silver and shimmery"
Inshaallah.
I echo...
who are you, Lord? who are
you, Lord?
"life is fantastically strange."
How is it that I traveled these
eight worlds. That they wait
for me, await repsonse.
The smallness of me falls
like rain, singular and whole,
drop by drop, immersion. or,
baptism. The chorus repeats:
"and love was left over. and
love was left over."
