Spirit Chimes

But it looked so real from here:
a love that landed softly on my life
while it was sleeping.

The rain, the sun, the shadows-
they were just another way to know you,

and I harvested your spirit, full and
heaven-soaked as the berries, new each
morning,

before the grass was swollen with the sun,
before a self-indulgent sky screeched
white upon white.

I saw nothing but your love,
negligee-soft and weightless with freedom,
under the oaks

and why not?

Why doubt the petals though they
are too beautiful to die?

Why doubt the eastern sky
when it opens behind a curtain
of fire,
and closes like the eye of God?

Beauty says believe, believe it all . . .

If you are drunk
for just one moment on winds
stirred up like vengeance,
you don't ask why Truth
made its home in your backyard,

why the Universe plays upon
the strings your heart created.

And so it was only logical
to see you everywhere,

to listen for your voice when
the lotus whispered
at the bottom
of the black well of night.

To see you in rivers that
mirror the invisible,
to feel you in oceans
where stars are born and bred
to be spirit.

It looked so real from here,
and I believed

as each day grew small,
a cramped lock-box of dreams.

Rows and rows of ivy-strangled
headstones that slip under cold
sheets of mist.

That's how you left me:

still believing, still devoted
to shadow, wind and dreams.

Patricia Joan Jones

To read more of my work go to: My Poetry List