yes, something happens in between
 
 
The wind blows cold shadows
  trees fold their leaves
into blue wilted salads
 
 
can you cling here
  can you cling somewhere near me
 
 
the mountain turns
when you turn
 
  and there is no other side
 
the range is a façade
we are sitting at the source
 
  why would we ever leave
           
 
Do you see the way our bodies change
every time you are near me
 
one of your hands
has stayed the same
 
you use it to pull me through time
     through the thick illusion
that any of it matters
   that we have any control over hands
 
 
limbs
           
                how gentle people can be
 
 
   are those words or trees
 
 
are shadows menacing memories of light
are hands alms, forgiving prayers
 
 
                 I have never regretted the shape of a cloud

 
or when I evolved into a mountain
   —deteriorated to the state of a human—
uncomfortable with my place in the melody
because I am just a note
  sometimes making love and chords 
that resonate black ripples
  but so small
 
how love moved me
            and God moved through me
and when I moved with neither of these
  I moved only in my sleep

how the pieces of me were scattered
then put together again, with less
and how that
was me

 
and in your arms I am the moon
that leads my father’s lost
platoon away from bamboo
bridges and rice paddies
 
 
              I have never regretted you.
 
 
 
I don’t need anything from you
other than to be near you
knowing that you know the one part of me 
that needs to be known

 
not only how difficult it is to die
but how hard it is to be alive
 
 
   it was when I let go
   I rode
 
 
and when I die
            I won’t say
it’s about time, because it’s not about time
nothing is about time.
 
 
   I won’t say
            it was about love
because when everything was stripped away
       there was no equation

 
the trees were wiser than me
the horses had known more.
 
 
I cry for the leaves crunching under my feet
   —it’s not because they’ve fallen
 
it’s that they’re here at all.




Jaclyn Costello