Postcard 104



Let me carry us home, carry you for just this stretch.

We've been here before. We've been lost before.

We're surely lost but we've been here before.

When you are dragging your body behind you,

I will tell you stories to keep your eyes bright.

I will tell you stories that may tread our hapless way into a path:

 

Once, I lie shot through and bleeding in the snow.

The pain it scurried throughout.

My little breaths were each a short season of freeze and thaw.

And I pulled it in and breathed through the pain and cold.

And I breathed in the pain and exhaled my warmth.

And I gathered it up.

The wound behind me sucked in those bunches of crisp brown leaves.

And sucked them all in. 

And the hole in me spun like a penny.

And the falling spin was the ringing of a spinning plate.

It spun and spun slower and smaller and I grew cold.

The snow was crust-red and I was a leaf-stuffed rag doll crinkling on the plane.

And I breathed out and let go into a dream:

 

I lie alive on the grass.

So alive my thoughts danced around my body on its warm back.

And that girl I had seen but once, dancing and lithe, came.

And she sat upon me, between the high sun and I.

And I gathered her up in my arms

and her long hair waved about over my face.

And we laughed and laughed.

And then that was it.

 

And though we have who knows how much longer,

we are home, a bramble above and dust below.

Lets rest a stretch and if I may ask,

rumble up a story and carry us home,

Another life.