Like a distant fountain experience re-lived,
The twinge at how the linens should be folded,
That elbow grease feel in the shoulder at our garage door squeal
What was it I endured, a slow torture
That at each turn of the screw threw up an illusion
To hogtie and confuse, as each breath was
Slowly shorter, more reduced.
The seeds have left the flowers
And beautiful blooms they are, so like you
At least how you used to be, before I
Sold my farm to buy your bed.
I breathe heavily myself these days,
Before the weight that you have left,
So much undone, and you a skeleton
When they finally pulled you away.
What is happening now, the great golden age
We only prophesied at a distance
They call time and space, and a part of me wants
You to know you were right all along
But you always knew you were, you hewed
Like a hummingbird so close to the surface,
Too close, we never saw your wings, so we
Made believe you weren't a bird
Who could fly away from this at any time
To a place so very different than this one is.
All the traps here in the matrix you warned me against
Remain largely unsprung, the truth, as a rule, not said.
It's the people you know, we have to leave them alone
That's the secret to peace, to cultivate our tolerance,
Of the others, to withhold from them our voice
The witch wound asks us so loudly now to speak --
And wasn't it, in the end, not the technologies
Suppressed, not the children forcibly forgotten,
Not even the wisdom that comes
To all of us at last in a flash
But the silence we assumed
For the good of the communal awakening;
We choose to isolate ourselves because we know
And pray to let go other people to their learning
Though you liked to advocate in your day
For the victims of the Martian slave colony
To those who barely know Vegas is run by bookies
And just saying it, somehow, was enough for you.
And now your silence, as she said, speaks volumes.
The pieces go in their places like on the chessboard
You imagined, but I cannot tell if it is your presence
Still among us, or if it is me who's finally present in it.
You'd prepared the earth for the loss of all illusions.
They were stripped away like barnacles from your boat
When everyone was so confident in the strength of their hand
They just blustered and bluffed your final voyage through
But the silence you left us with is our greatest protector,
To know the whole way through, without a blink,
Though a wince or two has wizened my kind face,
I walk through, now, I never stop remembering you
Like the stop and go customer you knew from high school
At each new moment, where things are never
As they were. As you reach into grace
And the angels surround us glad that we came
I understand that there is nothing to know, and how
I have a hand in everything that's felt -- tho I'll never know
If that is you who won't let go or only me. The peonies
At least are where you left them.
