Poem. Silence.

Let us not speak
too softly yet of the outcome
of this terrible thing. Let us
not submit just yet
to the hazy blue of quiet
dawn. You have
known me, I’ve been laid down
by
within
the nativity of your two
hands. What is next?
My father held me as a child,
held me as a child holds her
parents finger, held me scared
and sweet-breathing
against his quieted chest.
Now, as I sit
unarmed on the porch of his house
unable to rest
I wonder to what else I will
have to learn to submit. What else
is in this acquiescence, nothing
which I haven’t already left.

It is not homecoming which is
the marvelous battle, not the
mere occasion of return that counts.
Rather, it is the glorious upraising
of tear-wet face.
It is how one decides
gives way and starts
again on the stairs
how the door opens—far-flung madly
or
the most delicate calm—and allows
the moving light to guide the steps
back once more
in to the house.