Desert Ash (For Karin)

i.

Amid the waste, the desert ash is known
to cable out its roots,
to twist them down and out and farther out
until what’s shown is but
the smallest part.

We, too, have known that drought is of the essence,
not the bone that bends and sometimes breaks.
We were our own
ambitious undertaking,
each alone and each in his own way,
but not alone,

nor yet by bonds constrained;
did not atone
for those we hurt, how hungered, what we lost.
Beyond the cost of everything we owned,
we built a house of trust
and have come home.

II.

As to sex, it was next to nothing: dreams of lust,
the hand at night or morning.
So it seemed that sex was unimportant.
Still the dream
of love rose in absentia
like a stream full fed from fields of snow,
but never seen;

so far below the surface that it seemed
a thing no one could tap
or ever know.
Now little green remains from that Spring flood.
Light from above is white.
The near air dances.
The scene that's left is sand and bare expanses.

There is no fence to mend;
no wall constrains,
but there beneath the surface a hidden stream
has proved itself more faithful
than the hand that on occasion
sent this desert rain.

III.

And so love had its day,
a day replete with births and deaths of children.
We bowed down
to kings made known by crowns or by their thrones;
to queens by what they bear,
the wished for heir
and, thus, the future king.

And still the screen that set apart our love
could not be seen.
There was no slave to bless, no knave to frown.
We were but what we were,
what we had been
and for the most part separate.

If in dreams but partly understood
we partly owned
one half of one another, naught was shown
to partners or to others.
Still we deemed
ourselves above all lucky. We were known
by each to each
as mermaids once were known.

IV.

Now, once more face to face, no more alone,
we sit relaxed in sun next to a lawn
the wind brings leaves to cover;
leaves that gleam
in autumn now that summer days are weaned
away from heat and hunger.

Now the streams once known are mostly dry,
wild grasses grow
where once were weeds and clover;
trees we’ve known still stand leaf bare
and naked,

as spare as dreams that flower by a house
of which is seen
but beams and bare foundation.
As dreams die down, the leafless trees
expose us.

Still the brown
of desert ash is constant, gnarled, rock bound,
still nurtured by the roots we wrapped around
each other long ago.
It brings us home, this tree of endless loss
that is our poem.

V.

And so we ask no more what might have been.
We are but what we are, what we have been.
We add up to a total where and when,
if only in our thoughts,
we touch again,
as once we touched before,
to smiles and tears.
Our lives become this moment.

All the fears of age and painful dying
now appear as silly, almost childish.
What is clear is that what once we had
was always here,
much nearer than we thought,
like underwear,
up close, a second skin, scar tissue stretched
and changeless.

Sold and bought is one form of exchange;
the rain's another
that gives and gives and gives
to counter drought.

VI.

We sit apart and look.
There are no words and nothing more to say.
It is enough.
Just being is the answer.

So we slough
our bodies like a skin and like two birds,
soar up,
a part of wind that comes and goes
and, yet, is always constant.

We have learned
that waiting is eternal
like the flow of rivers, streams, and time;
an act that earns
the having for an instant,
so that time itself becomes a playground
full of sound
with swings and slides and ladders.

VII.

We have climbed
far up, slid down like children, wearing out
the knees and well-worn elbows
of these clothes
that we have only borrowed,
and so close
a gate never quite opened.

What we know is once more next to nothing.
What we sense is more than ever dreamed,
a flowing out
of love to all the margins.
We have at last come finally to what we are
and can cast off
the lies like worn out garments.

We are one
and at the same time many,
those we've loved and those, too, we have hated:
all are one,
as we two now are one.
Our wants are sated.

So nothing comes to nothing,
so much foam
that disappears by morning from the storm
that raged the night before.
The beach is gone
back to the deeps it came from.
All is calm,
the sun a brilliant star.

VIII.

All alone,
I walk as I have walked and pick up stones
and fragments from the shells that waves have honed
to hard translucent smoothness:
yellows, browns,
and sometimes reds and blues.

What is known
of individual fragments waves have thrown
like chaff on sand that’s left
is that they’re here,
available for picking;
as also are the memories of joys the mind serves up
in random bits
from depths of prior years.