Reformation

Reformation From the light above, fell ribbons downward Where against curved wood, your back ached despite its age And you knew again from that, you piled the pillows too high Or else bent too high yourself when at last lying down You wrapped your narrow arm around her waist to fall asleep at night and did Uncomfortably by choice, the way in youth You traded real worlds for lucid dreaming ones Lying on your back, where normally you never would And you drift into them still now But by accident ending up here, church Watching ribbons from the apse fall like alighting archangels Staring white felt doves down above the preacher's stage Handmade advent banners before ceremonies of blood Hearing the flick of rice paper print The creak of old pews, the voices of your elders saying "Peace be with you, peace be with you" In faded Dutch accents The feeling of their strong hands It was here you learned your future could not change It was here you learned that life and death before you Share one long hallway toward a door you must walk through in the end 'Til you can't know where it leads or choose That it makes you feel whole in some strange way To see the past you've lost take shape like that, even in dreams And it makes you feel terrified too, watching the door Is it all we want to belong to something no matter what? To pull a thread taut? Drag an ancient version of ourselves toward now and know for the first time How we became and where it all might one day go You awake at 3:00 a.m. to the soft voice of her dream, saying "These are the people who said that you like him would never die Until you do, and you will, and I will too Just like this, baby, but longer, forever And there's nothing past that door, I know it" Before she drifts back to sleep where you can't now and it's okay Peace be with you The room is a meadow and all tulips The bed is a bench and hard old oak Every father passes candy down the aisle Every child draws war scenes in pencil in the margins of their bulletin Every mother thumbs the hymnal and sings and it's okay You will wake up for real next time I know it, or maybe you won't But it will always be there somehow And one day when your children's children pull their own thread tight You will come crashing through the door to them Flowers in your rotted fists They will see what you two were and what you gave to them How you slept this way even near death In a rented place that was your church In a half-dreamt speech on love that was your prayer and sermon both In a meadow that was and was not the world You made to live and never really die in They will open their own door, their own same way No matter what and walk through it They will hold the life of everyone in their hands