For My Seniors, Spring 2021
This is my gift back to you,
an honest struggle
to put into honest words, so much,
as if a poem could
contain the span and spark and heartbeat
of these unexpected months together.
To unearth words that, if they are the right words,
must house the ancient weight of graven stones,
of bones and home, a place to keep one’s soul,
to find the artful phrases, that express
just this: you have been sunlight to me,
a surprising, but waited-for awakening.
And because no metaphor seems to say
all that I hope you will hear me say,
I will mix my metaphors like paint,
and shape and reshape this story like clay.
So let’s say I contained a forgotten box,
hinged and solid and locked and set down
a decade ago, there, where my dust had settled,
until your voices filled this empty room
And your hands flipped switches,
Pulled blinds, cracked windows,
Stirred the dust,
woke me up and broke what had seemed so determined
and immovable.
You have handed me back
my own open box,
Full to falling with open fields
where narratives and photographs unfade themselves
in such organic unfolding.
And I am full with you,
running like rivers, pouring like rain,
breezing like breath through the atmosphere,
and tilling up this hardened
dusty soil with the bright edges
of your questions.
I don’t know how this happened,
this world within a box within the room
within myself.
No map could have brought you
where you are, at the center of me
in this mad metaphor because
language is infinite and still too small
to contain the whole dense universe
you have given me.
It seems, I have only this:
you have changed me,
and I am grateful.
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