Sunday, September 21, 2008

A road that stretches horizon to horizon

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Altar Of Sacrifice
For Nicole

It was here my love was slain for you, before I ever knew
it would have to be given over for my heart to continue what
it was designed to do by some cosmic cleave of accident.

We were five years younger than we are now and you had
yet to live this one-sixth hence of your life as I had yet to
live my one-eleventh. It was Zion and we were in love then.

The shadows of youth slipped by timid on your fair skin and
your smile grazed effortless. You moved in a new land, a place
you’d never known with arms that held you more dearly than it.

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What we said between the silences that spent the miles across bleak horizons that bridged roads from one to the other, I cannot say now. Yet I know we spoke them, meant them, and every keepless word was.

Your voice still lives within me. I hear it from afar as though it
were bells
peppered over a dozing pasture. We slept beneath rock
in skins of staked nylon, a screened cowl open to the slipping stars.

I can still feel your breathing against my back, the jostle of your
movements during night as we lay so complete and vulnerable.
I would touch you gently as you dreamed and never knew I did.

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This then is about then and the time since that has pushed us to now. You’ve been in love, lost, trekked and wandered. You’ve grown up before my eyes and you are more woman than I knew. Life does this.

So let us pause to remember, that is all, just remember. We live here now and we know that. We thrive on a road that stretches horizon to horizon and we cannot know when comes the next. Maps are pointless.

If you see me high on a flat red mountain, my hands slick with some dark thing, do not be alarmed. Know I am deep in sacrifice, that I live another day in the dying, the offering of one love necessary that I might live to give another.

Joseph Gallo
September 21, 2008


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