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The Sword That Wounds Me

by

“And when [Love’s] wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.”

Kahlil Gibran

“On Love”

Walking as I do now with solitude
The memory of your voice echoes the grief
Carried off by the Angels on that bright September morn.
In those days I was impatient with your loneliness, your fear.
I wanted you to stand up to triumph to find your voice your strength
To not go gently into that good night to not give in to loneliness to despair
To show me the way to be a woman alone.
I had to learn that your past was not my prologue.
So now I stand, back bent, squinting toward the sun
honoring your sacrifice in service to my life.
Understanding now what Alice meant in saying,
The way forward, the way forward the only way forward
My only way forward is with a broken heart.

In joy In sadness

In weakness In strength

In anger In laughter

In defeat In triumph

Then, and now, I loved you. I love you. I love you.

The Guardian

by

Child soldiers march at night.
Homeless veterans haunt the Boulevard
You know longer patrol the Wall for this city’s Miserables.
Even Guardians get old.
Even Guardians get old.

Once you tended to Valjean and Javert
Protecting one from a crackhead son
Making sure the nursing home gave the other his HIV meds
That was then.
Now, even the memory is, “just too much, too much.”

Instead we find each other
through fragments of song
“Drifting on a memory/
Ain’t no place I’d rather be…”

Life plan for a poem

by

In youth I was beguiled
By master gardeners who, sowing words, raised
bountiful harvests
that fed and healed.

I thought it would be grand
To grow thought out thought things
Soul food for children of the new day comin’

In those days it was thought
That authority rested in
Knowledge that required
Careful cultivation.
The only debate
was over what was worth knowing
and who was worth cultivating.

And so, I studied.
Apprenticed myself to those
who had never seen the likes of me
do more than pull a plow.
Brought the seeds from my grandmother’s garden
and said,

“See? This too, is beautiful.
And its fruit makes all of us strong
And one day this will be
A poem.”