There was a time when you were almost content
with what you were taught;

a time you could almost believe
the popular deception
of creating your own unfading haven;

a time you were almost persuaded, through Sunday’s
cheerful affirmations, to claim a helium hope,
blaming any leakage on the weakness
of your faith.

But when that which is precious  
is leaving,
and you stand at midnight’s window,
watching, listening,

there is nothing to do but be,
in the weight, breadth, and depth,
of your emotion;
there is nothing to do but suffer that love

to pierce you, to
let the harsh sorrows of the world defeat you,
courageously shape you,
mysteriously prepare you —

for this is what it means to be still and alive
and be true.

Here’s what I remember: it wasn’t at first sight,
owing to the burdens of loss we both carried,
and owing to the complications (me, already a father,
her, already a mother), instead it was the last sight,
or rather, the sight after many sights;

which came after our first talks, like tiptoeing over stones,
and after the ecclesiastical courts (the occasional unblessing),
and after some counsellor’s warning: how could we, how would we,
weave our history, our disparity, into the already formed
but frayed garments of our lives?

…yet, soon, the ballooning phone bills,
the relief of shared grief, the once-withering hope
fireworks-ing into flights of affection,
the pouring into each other, the releasing
of our own conditioning and trusting
the reception of friends,
the understanding of sisters and brothers;

and suddenly, the many sights became the first sight,
and I saw her,
standing like a fountain,
a crystal tree, backlit in blue and green,
and shimmering;

and I saw her in that red dress, in her Buick Skylark,
window down, her head, a half turn,
a smile, a wave, a certainty;

our hands, palms touching and fingers twined, grew happy,
our gaze, spanning country and city, built a home,
our eyes — now reflecting thousands of sunsets —
not always synchronous, but willing;

now we hike with walking sticks, we watch,
give each other space, but don’t wander too far up the shore
without the other;
we use electric bikes, we travel smooth, broad, trails,
we round tight, difficult, bends,
one leads, now the other;

she texts me from the far end of Super Store,
we meet at the checkout counter like secret lovers,
we forget the almond milk, but not each other;

our quarrels are mellow now, we fight with the assurance
of knowing we’ll stick around, pick it up another day,
we seldom do;

we’re on our way to become a toddling old couple,
we’ll make quaint appearances at family reunions,
recall, for each other, the names of children;

we sit silently on driftwood …longer,
we pause under cedar and coastal fir …longer,
we get slightly lost hiking above the Koksilah river,
we could overnight, she’s thought ahead, brought snacks;

our lives have taken on a compressed, mystical, quality,
each morning she asks, Sweetheart, what’s important today?
so now every day is her birthday, every day, our anniversary;

our hearts beat on, they beat softer,
but the rhythm is stronger,
chances are they won’t stop together,
but however that goes,
of course, they will.

If the mountains swell and rumble, split and tumble
into the sea,
and the waters froth and foam, rise and roar,

and if the politicians rage, and the nations get up
on their horses of war,

and God says, “That’s enough!”

then burns all the land mines and missiles and fighter jets:
and the empires kneel,
and the propagandists renounce their tongues,
and the money puppets empty their pockets,
and the shores and hills grow still —

well, that would be a wonderful story:

like the close of a good book, where a joyful river
with pleasing streams
is running through the centre of the city,

and the people call it Holy, believing
the Spirit of God swims in the river’s depths,
rides her waves and runs her rapids:
God’s wild mercy and flying wet hair catching the laughing sun,

and no one needs a fortress, and no one needs a refuge,
and no one needs to panic, and no one needs pills,
when the Lord of impossible beauty, and bracing stillness,
is with us,
          here, in our tear-soaked rooms, our trembling hospitals;
          with us, in the storms of these stampeding times.

There can be thousands of galaxies in a galaxy cluster. One of our larger ones has a mass of three quadrillion suns and is a billion light years across.

It’s out there. To us, a speck. But useful. We employ it as a young child might a toy magnifying glass, hovering over a crack in the sidewalk, peering deeper and deeper, prying into the affairs of the edgeless cosmos.

Lemurs don’t know about galaxy clusters. At night they look up into tamarind trees, choose one juicy leaf after another, and lounge the whole day long. They settle all their disputes quietly, through ‘stink fights’.

The poet of Psalm 8 didn’t have access to an infrared telescope, or means to launch it if he had. He knew some names of constellations, coined in Mesopotamia. Also knew the startling fabric of the Milky Way, and strained to see beyond its lazuli-blue lace.

And what he saw were the irises of Yahweh. And forgetting his personal conflict, dropped to his knees and uttered a question:

When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained, what are mortals that you are mindful of them, what are humans, that you care for them?

It’s a question we’ve since vivisected, data-mined, and tied to a chair to beat out our proprietary answers. And every answer brings another stinking war. All the while failing to see it was never a question to be answered, but a possibility, to be held: spellbound, enrapt, in awe of being. All of us, huddling together in perfect humility.