Upon a Wet Trampoline under the Stars

I have sat under the stars,  

A link in a circle  

Of lovers and strangers, 

And felt each possession of depths 

Of pain and joy to make sense of.  

And in that place I have wondered  

How I might describe this:  Not joy.  

Not peace with the world.  

Below the constellations  

I was on top of the world  

And the center of eternity.  

It is a kind of calm, but more, 

A kind of love, of everyone  

And no one specifically.  

It comes from an odd thought  

Of how great is the responsibility  

To exist and to live  

Within this grand, removed space. 

How small but how equal  

In greatness to the untapped multitudes  

Within each of these links 

Here and everywhere?  

I preach to only  

Be able to 

Speak in first person. 

But he is always  

There before me. 

It is a relic of the first lens  

Through which to love  

And hate the world, 

First moral code that 

Has melded to these bones, 

First language and first voice 

Blended in tone and harmony 

With the echo of something  

That could sound like me, 

This fear of dishonesty. 

When I say I,  

I say you, 

And I see Him, 

And I see Her. 

And when I say 

I hate you, 

I say too 

I hate me.   

And I love you  

In the same breath  

Draws binds that hold fast 

Me to them and constrict this jaw 

Until with no words 

And no veins to declare, 

I love me. 

In between the two of them, 

At the triangled point I found 

The belief that  

My greatest purpose 

Was another's happiness. 

This goodbye will look like 

A dark red, burning  

With black ash, 

Before it can cool 

To a sunset. 

It's such a surprise.    

This younger daughter 

Could have intellectualized  

Her way through a lifetime  

And passed a sisterhood.  

But life, in its tiniest actions,  

Already uncovers  

Such richness of textures,  

And dissolves these dichotomies immediately  

Until we have to begin to consider  

At least that maybe  

What we most fear losing, 

Because it's all we've known, 

Because it's all we think we deserve, 

Is already gone. 

All who have my voice 

Instead of me:  

I love you but cannot have you.  

I will become more.  

Thanks to your love.  

But Goodbye now.  

So that I may know fully my own love,  

And maybe, in the future,  

But with no promises,  

We will live and become  

Into each other’s paths again,  

And our love will be a thousand times brighter  

For this Goodbye.  

But until then, do not look for me.  

Where I cannot yet be.  

What a cluster of contradictions.    

If I can make sense of both,  

Great and Small,  

Burden and Beauty,  

On a wet trampoline,  

With giggles and gossip,  

Then maybe I must be  

Onto the right sort of something.