POEM: In the Pressed Sweet Grass

When I looked for you
In the pressed sweet grass,
The outline of your body was all I found;
In a circle that formed on the ground
Where we wrote our history
Using heaping mounds of Faith.

How did I expect this to end?
What did I think would happen?
Can I refute what faith whispers to my heart,
What science inscribes into DNA?
Did I believe that I would be spared,
That God loved me - His most favorite of all -
so much
That I should not drink from this cup?

I always imagined starkness without you,
In the luxury of your touch,
But it was never as bare as the truth.

Now the value of one more moment
With you, rises like breath:

My love,
You are the heat my body produces,
You are the tempo of my beating pulse,
You are my very own desire for what is good.

Gone – before the promise is kept;
Gone – before the map of our world could be explored;
Gone – leaving just pressed sweet grass
To tell me you are not here,
That you have moved on,
Gone ahead, without me –
To someplace we’d always known,
Leaving me with this limp:
Forever friendless,
Forever moonless,
Forever alone.

M C Biegner 3/2005