brightestspark moments

For the parents and children who have shared with me my moments of being most alive

Someday maybe they will lay out my days,

the eternal inquirers, experts in lifetimes,

measuring each furious fragile blaze

in their ageless hands, holding each strand made of moments

up to a spectrum of brightest to dark

and they’ll want to know, what were these timemomentplaces

of fiercesuddengoldestburn of my brief spark

in this aeon-long bonfire of human lives –

winking, blinking intensely, then gone.

And I’ll say, those were her, those were heartfuls of her.

What do I love most about you? It varies

hourly, really, there’s so much to choose from.

So much to treasure – your eyes, voice, your fairy

hair, sunthroughclouds when I open the door

and reach into your crib, brand new discovery

of every toy that you’ve had since your birth,

soft hand tucked under my arm each and every

time we go walking on blusterysky days,

and your nosewrinklingtongueouteyesshut surprise

when I splash you or feed you a food you’ve not tried.

What I burnbrightestlovemostest today

is how you and I, we are a home of our own.

We live in a country right here, far away,

beyond color and language and income and age,

beyond tiles and passports and laws about borders,

and spaces folks make because they feel afraid,

we make the rules and dimensions and order

and we make them evermore bright, brave, and safe.

Dolly drives, we eat plastic, do things just to do them

because they seem good to us, and that is good.

I’ll tell those humankind record curators,

those writers on palms and readers of fate

that this was the time we made languages greater

than history’s recorded; we sat on the floor

and spoke vowels and syllables, easy-sound words

that mean nothing to others, treasures to us

cause we make them; who’d know, who could call us absurd

if we don’t say them right?

We both know how we mean them, and that is enough.

Then I wink and you laugh and we get up and go

wherever we’re going – the kitchen, the palace,

the wonderworld’s edge, or somewhere else you’ll know

when we get there, that’s where we are headed –

take my hand, let’s go darling, together and bold

round the table and sofa in search of the kingdom

we already own, emblazoned indelible lovefiregold

on this sparkstrandself life that the angels abstractledly

covet – us, hand-in-hand on our wandering road

that leads us to what we already are – home.