Abuelo
       

How little we know, in the end. That a boat
can stall at the edge of the sea, until it is

overturned, at last, by what it loves most.
That love is the fortress with no walls

and winding gardens. That time gnaws
us down to a new bone, then to pure spirit.

And that grief is a kind of church—it is
that sparse and that clean. It is the blue rose

held in the clear water of the mind, is a
marble of honey sealed inside a pitcher

of salt—is, in this way, sweet at the core.
But my tongue is made stone. And my heart,

a stone trying to draw milk from another
stone. Here is your body, sweet and solemn

witness. Here is your crown of silence.
Here is your hand, itself a kind of voice

in the dark. Here is your skin, a white flower
blossoming and blossoming again. It is only

the cracked light that now separates us, a
quiet door you have passed through. It is

not you who has gone. It is the sky, now
lowered, that has come to walk with you.

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Copyright © 2016 Cecilia Llompart All rights reserved
from Gulf Coast
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission