May Perpetual Light Shine
We have encountered storms
Perfect in their drench and wreck
Each of us bears an ornament of grief
A ring, a notebook, a ticket torn, scar
It is how humans know their kind—
What is known as love, what can become
the heart’s food stored away for some future
Famine
Love remains a jewel in the hand, guarded
Shared fragments of earth & air drift & despair.
We ponder what patterns matter other than moons and tides:
musical beats—rumba or waltz or cha cha cha
cosmic waves like batons furiously twirling
colors proclaiming sparkle of darkness
as those we love begin to delight
in the stars embracing
Copyright © 2017 by Patricia Spears Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 17, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.