Among the milkweed and sedge,
horizon line far from our estimation,
we lay under the neverday sky,
tugged by what were not autumn breezes.
What course is best to pour open,
we thought — each of us so certain
in our answers when we rose to descend —
whiplike checks of boxes, dealbreakers.
Who is prepared when no landscape
flows the same, unspoiled, through centuries?
We were sapped hollow by fear; it ruled our passions,
and good desire buckled its holy estimations —
our cast attention, our draw of cards,
our fingertips nervous for plucking.
We each knew these were living flowers
to set upon the altars of our bright Gods.
Even the best among them was thorned:
no vessel could satisfy all circumstances
and their prevailing knots and sharp edges.
For when years came upon us in a wild snare,
so many lost ourselves in gaping undertows,
and we did not let loose the heavy things,
shrug the precious garments from our shoulders,
and the years layered them thick upon us,
and the deep loomed so closely dark below.
Remember that, suppliant — buoy up upon
what remains untouched by the clinging clock,
gigantic tumult and its divisions, dire rumbles;
we chose the ecstatic headwaters, the brightness.
No garment is too tight to loosen away.
It is changeable wineskin, a rebranding
hyping a different sameness within ourselves
where the light of foreday sky shines on
and breath fills up our yawning bellows,
a fuel to stoke our fire-filled waking.
KALLISTI 