Reformation

Reformation

From the light above fell ribbons downward
Where against curved wood your back ached despite its age
And you knew again from that you piled the pillows too high, or else bent too high yourself
When at last, lying down, you wrapped your narrow arm around her waist to fall asleep at night, and did
Uncomfortably by choice
The way in youth you traded real worlds for lucid dreaming ones
Lying on your back where normally you never would
And you drift into them still, now but by accident, ending up here, church

Watching ribbons from the apse fall like alighting archangels
Staring white felt dovеs down above the preachеr’s stage
Handmade advent banners before ceremonies (of/with) blood
Hearing the flick of rice-paper print
The creak of old pews, the voices of your elders saying
“Peace be with you, peace be with you”
In faded Dutch accents, the feeling of their strong hands

It was here you learned your future could not change
It was here you learned that life and death before you share one long hallway
Toward a door that you must walk through in the end
So you can’t know where it leads or chose
And it makes you feel whole in some strange way
To see the past you’ve lost take shape like that, even in dreams
And it makes you feel terrified too, watching the door

Is it all we want to belong to something no matter what?
To pull a thread taut, drag an ancient version of ourselves to our now
And know for the first time how it became and where it all might one day go

You will wake at 3 a.m. to the soft voice of her dreams saying
“These are the people who said that you, like him, would never die
Until you do, and you will
And I will too, just like this baby, but longer
Forever
And there’s nothing past that door, I know it”
Before she drifts back to sleep where you can’t now, but it’s okay
Peace be with you

The room is a meadow and all tulips
The bed is a bench in hard old oak
Every father passes candy down the isle
Every child draws war seats in pencil, margins of their bulletin
Every mother thumbs the hymn notes saying
“It’s okay, we’ll wake up for real next time, I know it.”
Or maybe you won’t, but it will always be there, somehow
And one day when your children’s children pull their own thread tight
You will come crashing through the door for them, flowers in your rotted fists
They will see what you two were, and what you gave to them
How you slept this way, even near death, in a rented place that was your church
In a half-dreamt speech on love that was your prayer and sermon, both
In the meadow that was and was not the world you made to live and never really die in

They will open their own door their own same way no matter what and walk through it
They will hold the life of everyone in their hands