Returning

Returning

Down by the holy glitch in the river where presumption held love
In the wings. He lets poetry be in the birds. He perches
On a hollowed out log, wind bothers the trees. He thought
Things never thought before and understood things
Even sea glass, toe shells, and bottled messages
That have drifted for years couldn’t wash up. Afloat
In the strange wild of the forest smell, he inhaled deeply.
Honey, can be so somber on the way to one’s heart.
A blade slipped in so easy, it’s like it never had a birth.
He has been swept up like a sailing seed. Changing
Habitats, changing lips. Changing hands like tributaries
Leaving long, wide rivers. It can be so easy,
To leave the source, when you know
He guides the force of her waters
Better than you ever could. A good man knows,
How to leave the mornings to a star with much more light.
It has come to pass that he turned away
From places where they were headed because
Sometimes two forces are just too strong as one. It’s drown
Or land safely on a bank safely, as one broken engine.
In this part of the poem, he closes his eyes and let’s you know
The measure of loving someone is not where you end up.
Sometimes we all cannot imagine bending or contorting something,
So we can utilize it. Sometimes we choose not to break or change
The thing we love. It’s easier to see it -stay whole-
And not see it and love it still. Always floats on the back
Of black swans, rare and guarded. He thinks about metaphors
Around him. He feels himself in the classroom of enormous silence.
He feels like he is still giving blood to a burned down hospital.
Full of corpses of hope, his denial is still willing to give its blood for.
He digs his hands into the soil, holds the weight of earth,
And tosses it as he knows no harvest shall ever come from
Bitter soil. Some of the biggest battles of history have been fought
With the smallest enemy. Don’t believe it?
Ask a malaria patient about about the mosquito.
He sits among trees, light, space open for the wind to run,
And he’s reminded that before he loved and lost
He would come and sit here and everything around him
Said the same thing. Go ahead and love but know
Nothing you choose to feel that way towards. Nothing,
Will ever be yours. Everything belongs to no one.
That’s why loss is everyone’s. He goes back to
The places he’s broken into to steal affection,
That he already knew he’d never own. How deeply
We love to steal certain fragrances and hold them in our dark bodies,
Knowing all along that which rises from the earth
Is certain to return? No matter how tightly we are held,
We are all just flowers hidden that will always make the same choice
When the right breeze blows. To return
To the earth where we bloomed once
Never forgetting the joy of being wild and natural.