To my Lover, Earth.

the morning after you washed up

onto the shore

the fog rolled in

and then cleared

revealing the big dark mass

that is your body

with a piece of you missing.

they are still trying to find the cause.

we flocked around you

trying to imagine the plight

of such a beautiful and foreign

creature

somehow, somewhere

knowing that we have also lost

a piece of ourselves

with your passing.

the ninth grey whale

to wash up dead

in one year.

I was submerged in my isolated world

heart heavy and broken open.

there is so much to break for in the tiny spheres I orbit

so much to ache for.

and then I saw you — an amorphous form spread across the sand

on a land I call home

and suddenly, I was pulled

out, swift like a riptide

into the wider aching of the world.

this world I call lover, home and source.

each night a piece of me still grieves my past love

still feels a sharp string tugging

somehow, somewhere

still connected to a thing that has died.

and each morning I awake

with a giddy elation,

a piece of me is softly pulled

up and towards a budding love,

and I am falling again, renewed.

so often, my loss is contained

within my small sphere

because I don’t know

how to feel a loss so large;

sometimes I forget that it’s also you I am losing

when I crumble inside the absence of his tender embrace

but I feel you all the same.

and so often, my love is contained

within my small sphere

whole continents move and shake beneath her eyes

unearthing me

with her magnetizing stare

this love extends beyond us, to your waters and lands, all the same.

and sometimes I wonder how we can possibly fall in love

when our timeless lover is dying

and yet to love now

is to grieve together

is to dance and mourn with the still living

is the only path we can walk with any sanity.