I do not write about you
because you are everything good and whole and sacred,
I have a tendency to only write about wilted brokenness:
the chipped cup, the forest blight, the deer’s tangled antlers,
scarlet and haunting on the side of the road,
and yes, people write about the breathtaking too,
ballads and odes, I have read and wept in awe,
but if someone insisted, I guess would scribble
seeds, strings, and ribbons spilling from his beak,
how he hopped inside his home where there was shrill chirping and
opened mouths larger than bodies to feed, and a mother
still and quiet, but it was him who hunted, gathered
and fed and allowed his partner to stay inside for weeks,
and what languished beneath them,
in a time when I was just hollowed out and brittle bones,
how it was you who carefully weaved each piece of twig and hay around me,
found feathers, black currants, and bright carnations to fill
the barren space while I walked in a fog,
until eventually the glow from your love cut through and found me clear-eyed
and I discovered you had built a nest for just the two of us,
I would write how you are a red oak tree and the willow too,
how time spent with you is like a lazy hammock, your presence
cool water collecting at my feet, how you are softness
and a salve in this prickly world;
the exception and constant always,
how you allow me to write of darkness on paper with abandon,
safely navigating each corner and cave,
because I know after I am returning to your quiet light.
