It has been
for years
in my bones.
A friendship -
incandescent -
over dark grey roads.
I didn’t see
the compass points with fear
Or learn a map
with danger on its lines.
Instead I saw
a map of veneration
opened like a clockwork
globe of gold
or like a beehive
live with new creation
we walked and rode
and flew to other worlds.
I don’t know if
my son
will know this beehive
or if he’ll have
this eminence to hold.
So let us take a stand
just to remember
what it is like to grow
with laughing skies
the open doorways
wide upon the moment,
the cities that have offered up their hands.
I used to make a journey
on a long bus,
from Prague to England
trying not to fly
And something about
crossing in the darkness
across the sky-lit breadth of
mapped out roads
Felt at once very old,
and very open,
As if we lived a story
we’d been told.
So I will tell
my son
that same long story
For what we tell
is sometimes what becomes.
And know that there’s
more space inside
my being,
because I grew up
with it in my bones.