I Hope It Never Leaves Me

When the world opens,
what steps forward to meet it?
We are given these bodies
to move through
their brief appointments.

Let your hands learn the weight of things,
let sweetness stay in your mouth,
and let bitterness, too,
have its hour.

Look how the day gives itself away
and how the old one haunts the new
with a deeper blue than you expected,
nothing gets saved for later.

The heart lifts its face
to whatever light remains,
ordained to open and never close,
and love says to it,
oh please, make me a way
through your beautiful vaulted bones,
like how we’ll beg a band of angels
to let us into heaven.

Look and look again,
look closer now.

I’ll always be here parked
by the river  
so cold, so fresh and awake
I don’t need a pass, 
no living thing asks
permission to want
what keeps it alive.

Now that you see me
stand where you are 
it’s already too late,

to be somewhere else.