Exhortation

on the street this morning
I cried

about all things life
pertains
I cried that
your feet don’t know
the burden of care
I harvest
daily

what is tolerable is cruelty
what is cruel is tolerance
what the years do to the
hands of our youth
is criminal
is cut from boxes
of jasmine
and scattered
in the currency
of regret

you and I both know
the trials and trails
of homelife

you and I both know the
ever shifting sands
beneath my feet

you and I both know the
idle dreams behind
your eyes

but still I feel—
this uncertainty I dispel
which so worries you
could, in your hands,
become more certain—
more stable

yet the short memories i
have of you reflect
like a movie
of my entire life in
tiny broken increments
and so much is beautiful
and so much is triumph
and so much is happiness
I’d never known
before
and much is sadness
much is staring at 2 AM walls
asking questions
answers haven’t been invented for.

but having seen your sunshine
smother my harrowing days
in having felt your legs move
nearer mine
in having felt the wonders
of your mind
collapse the deserts of my arms
you may never know the
small
grace of loss
you’ve granted me.

and I sit here

exhorting you
to remember
that
in the arthritis of my soul
in the Siamese night

i miss you always

~winter 2004