and
I could draw instead of write.
I
would shade in the language like a landscape
The
line of the hills would fade down,
all
those hollows sequestered by distance.
But
it’s not a landscape I’m thinking of, it’s me.
It’s
me that’s lifting up into the paling sky
Easily,
as if I had never been clay.
No
distance to reach through
Nothing
to reach but You.
There
are a hundred metaphors for this.
When
I was a girl
I
barely knew You.
Too
shy to rest in the boat,
rocked
by the sea,
under the heat of a glassy sky.
Too
shy to touch You.
But
that veil had worn so thin,
I
had to let it loose.
Too
tired to pretend there could be any distance between
Those
hills and that sky, the rising line of horizon
where they touch at every point, seamlessly
sewn in together by the light but not the same.
I asked You for a bower and You gave me
loose red soil,
tilled up clean and getting everywhere
between the raised beds for vegetables.
I wanted You to take me home and You!
You took me right back here.
Here's something hard to learn,
that I must let You go
for You to return again
newly mine and presently real,
however You will be,
in that moment unlike the last.
In this way I am constantly letting go of Your hand
in order to grasp it again and
in this way, You are taking me somewhere,
probably right here,
where I live with You
in each passing moment dying to the next
and touching all along the light,
seamless, always falling into distance which
is not there, after all.
Instead, it's a kitchen garden growing fruits and vegetables.
