"This is love: to fly toward a secret sky,
to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment.
First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet."
-Rumi
Remember me,
you thought you heard
your heart say,
above and beyond the floating
palace of sky.
Remember me and
everything you learned here.
It wasn't the way you reached the
mountain's summit
like a new Apollo staking claim to
a more merciful Olympus.
Or that first breath, that endless breath,
when all that blue dove into your
unsuspecting chest
and inhabited you,
and infused you with something
like immortality,
its pulse like passion,
if passion were spirit and light.
Oh no, it was that sky . . .
sprawl of scarves from an unseen
gypsy,
ruffled robes from a fallen angel:
layers, layers . . . heaven and earth
in the sweetest, softest clash,
dueling for the prize of your love.
And so you search your shoulders
for those phantom wings cut off
at birth,
because you know damn well
you could fly if only
you could remember.
You could reach down, far down,
into the valley and pick up the
fairy pools,
Gaia's singing tears,
or newly minted coins dropped
by the lords of sky
and rain just for you.
Shining there. For you.
One leaf moves like a spirit
into a bluer afterlife.
But you decide not to follow.
You'll remain a borrower of
dust,
a tenant in this peeling coat
of skin,
for all you ever needed
is above
and below
and crowded like a
thousand lost prayers
within you.
Patricia Joan Jones
First published in Orions Belt Magazine
To read more of my work go to: My Poetry List