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.