Words for my Insides

"I stop,

gather wet wood,

cut dry shavings, and for her,

whose face

I held in my hands

a few hours, whom I gave back

only to keep holding the space where she was,

I light

a small fire in the rain.

The black

wood reddens, the deathwatches inside

begin running out of time, I can see

the dead, crossed limbs

longing again for the universe, I can hear

in the wet wood the snap

and re-snap of the same embrace being torn.

The raindrops trying

to put the fire out

fall into it and are

changed: the oath broken,

the oath sworn between earth and water, flesh and spirit, broken,

to be sworn again,

over and over, in the clouds, and to be broken again,

over and over, on earth."

-Galway Kinnell

You give, and You take away. My heart will choose to say, Lord blessed be your name. Nothing was ever mine anyway.