Promise of the Elements

This poem appears in my book, Blown into Now: Poems for a Journey, and was first published by SPLASH / HAUNTED WATERS PRESS

for all who mourn

And when you cry,
I will find you.
When you’re breaking or empty,
and you can’t speak,
close your eyes,
lean your head back.
Feel my silver fingers
loosed from above,
to wash free your fears.

Or call to me
when I climb on a northern wind,
or when I dive like a seabird, uncaged.
Always I will come by summer’s end,
a cloud of plush,
thick on meadow grass,
to quiet you with a blanket.

Or when someday
the white, gray, and black
shiver and dissolve,
I will make you warm.
I will return with unwalked sand,
with streaming, jubilee sky,
with a ribbon of pelicans
that skim the waves like kites.

May these offerings open you
like a diamond knife,
open again alight.