by Wanda Brayton

Created on: November 05, 2009

This Side of Infinity

A dark chasm created itself

between your hand and mine.

How I longed to follow you,

to stay beside you on your journey -

inevitable denial left a jagged ache,

unanswered, so I thought,

those desperate prayers I uttered so faithfully.

I cursed shadows that took you

until I felt your ascension into light.

Then, I understood that I had to remain

on the far side of the sun (where it is cold, and lonely),

until a bridge could be built, allowing me to safely cross,

until my prepared path was spread upon the gleaming horizon

where you waited, within sustained silence.

Mine was in not knowing the moments to come,

the reckonings I would, perhaps, discover.

Mine was in not evolving in a forward motion,

but backwards, into faded past.

Tides swell and crash onto distant shores, unheard.

Shells are cast onto sand, bereft of all but song.

I crawled on ancient lands,

searching for revolutions to restrain those covenants I'd kept.

Future tithings were impossible to barter or beg.

I'd once sought comfort in a universal madness,

unremitted by starlight.

Ah, but how could I believe

in a love that would yet save me from dissent?

Here I am now, salvaged by invariable truth,

infinite and broadened by beauty's fine grace.

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