We live on the crust of the earth
that is constantly heaving
and flowing and shifting,
and forgetting us.
Our tracks and monuments and boundaries;
our wonders and forevers;
are built on dust and wind,
one molecule at a time.
Like our hand in the river,
we are a great experiment
in denial and hope;
of loving people
who love others,
..who love others.
We are a migrant;
an explorer and refugee;
a homeland of leavers.
We are a wave,
that believes it is the water,
that believes it is the wave.
We are in constant motion,
and the motion covers us
and fills us,
and then moves on
and betrays us
to a promise
only one of us made.
Time pushes
and pulls us
and leaves us behind,
with not even an answer
for this
never-ending sweeping away.
What happens to all that was meant to stay,
in this place that so easily lets go;
like great cities
carefully built to be timeless
before slipping beneath the desert?
What happens when a book is dust?
Where do the letters go,
in neat heaps and piles,
swept away with the slightest breath?
Are they free again,
at last?
Do they no longer belong to anyone?
Do they belong to everyone?
Do they mix and move and bend
in ancient precision,
and then settle back down into
some kind of meaning?
Or do they wait,
uncertain of such obligations?
And where are all the love letters,
tear and lip stained,
mingling
in what was, and is, and is becoming?
Do they crumble in pairs,
to surrender and fall together?
Do they somehow catch the scent
of their intimate purpose?
And where am I?
Where are you;
when we swirl
in this same release?
Will we still belong to each other?
Will we belong to no one?
or perhaps
everyone?
Like our hand in the river;
in denial and hope,
of loving someone,
who loves someone,
..who loves someone.