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
 

 

Credit

Copyright © 2017 by Patricia Spears Jones. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 17, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem
“This poem was started on my birthday as I was thinking about my mother who died in 2013—that she may really be happier in heaven. The title is from a Christian prayer for the dead. The afterlife is contemplated in a range of beliefs, and for me the idea of returning to the celestial is very powerful.”
—Patricia Spears Jones