Benediction of the Blossoming Loveless

I saw the students smiling, streaming through

the fourth-floor hallways, and somehow knew their happiness

was simply the pure knowledge

that they would never find that one, enduring, sought-for love

and so were freed from looking for it—

free from expecting it, from wanting it

(these students smiling, streaming through)—

how of course this isn’t true,

even if it felt like a pure infusion of knowledge,

but this was the vision, the momentary vision, the message

delivered up through my exhaustion—

to be free from expecting it, from wanting it—

as I passed, walking in the opposite direction

and knowing how, of course, this can’t be true (for me, at least, it seems)

when what I truly want is still that keener joy:

a kind of unexpected touch

delivered up through my exhaustion—

something about the way the light will expand

(even as we seem to be heading in opposite directions),

keep expanding. A white room, entirely emptied. Ceiling, high.

How our infirmities, our lacks,

in a kind of unexpected touch,

will not keep us from drawing even closer,

if this is a way to talk about light and the way it will keep expanding

in us, through us, even after we will have to part.

Or will it be too new-agey of us to say, “another portal opened/

Has opened.” Even though it will have.

What does it mean that we won’t be able to go through it—

though this will not keep us from drawing even closer—

in real time? The parked cars, at vespers. The passing cars,

like whispers. Whispers into night—

as another portal opens—

just before it’s fallen. Anywhere—

because why won’t we be able to go through it?—

to live with you, inside you, this is where I’d go:

Montparnasse. Pere Lachaise. The timothy fields. The dirt road.

Like whispers. Or let me chain the doors of the walk-in closet,

strip it of everything. Except this light—a place to feel this light

before it’s fallen—

strip it of everything but being with and in your light

Again. Without you.

Montparnasse. Pere Lachaise. The timothy fields. The dirt road.

A closet full of black clothes. Perfectly hung. Like vestments.

Strip it of everything. Except this light—a place to feel this light.

Then that robin’s egg. Broken, vacant, turquoise on the ground.

Cobalt violin, I write. Out of nowhere. Don’t know why.

(Again, I’m without you.)

In my world, I feel, it is the sky. Through the pine, the walnut tree.

Not, alas, your closet full of clothes. Perfectly hung. Like vestments.

That sky: Insistent. Undeniable. Midsummer.

How can I lean on it like that—

Cobalt violin out of nowhere—

Spreading like forever above me?

That solid sky—through the pine, the walnut tree.

How can air be that solid? That huge? So full of silent sound?

Then several nights of voices—

can I lean on them like this—

our voices finding, once again, that same place,

where they spread their forever above me--

some forever of expanding light, our shared

living in it, that surrender?

Surrender, then, to what we cannot understand:

Several nights of voices.

An utter, shared surrender:

our voices finding, once again, that same place

in all that we can never live.

In what we understand only as holy.