Monday, January 06, 2014

All we ever keep

 photo Starloss1.jpg

In all the universe, few things are given such brevity as that of a human life. ~Aucassin Verdè

Starloss

In the end, it is all we ever keep.
Everything evades us. The bee that
kept the flower, the wren that lost
the egg, the day that misplaced its
star all fled to a saddening dusk that
gently laps like a blanket of salt.

Would this keep these kisses I have saved
for you? From their hungered press onto
your patient lips? My hands from finding
their only purpose aside your nimbus hips?
Morning from throwing itself against rocky
dreams we must abandon to embrace it?

The doll’s shoe, the flung ring, the hours
we meant to share with those we never
shared them with. There are ladders that
reach up yearning for the night to take them,
lift them from their sidelain sullenness and
launch them up, up, into the cold bright slurry.

 photo Starloss2.jpg

What we give we keep; what we take we delay
in returning like a borrowed book one promises
to replace onto a waiting shelf teeming with
wonders unimagined, moments others might
strike in curious happenstance by a troubled
sea that worries itself on the backs of monarchs.

As everything evades us, nothing eludes.
For we are forged in the violent hearts of
stars and everything that was ours will be
ours again to lose and let go, to radiate out
into the burning cold of having once been.
In the end, this, this is all we ever keep.

Joseph Gallo
January 6, 2014

 photo Starloss3.jpg

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