72.

Another poet scoffed when I said

I was writing love poems, although

What poems are not about desire

And exile, the memory of a mother’s

Voice, the hope for a place free of pain

And death? Sometimes a poet will take us

Farther from the terrors of breath

And oblivion, leading us into the dread

That night was a relentless error

That gave birth to us as fear,

But then she will turn and imagine a space

As gentle and whole as God’s grace, lifting

Heart and bone from pit and disappearance

As if her song of you and me were eternal.