A Restoration

It helps to think of you
alive
your feet reviving
our old shadows,
the circling stars your crown,
the sundials stretching
light

It helps to think you breathe
the same polluted
air in our forsaken paths,
all the world with lungs aflame
burning for your
speech

Messages reach harbor
when quickening of blood
echoes to the soul,
and in that sound
I hear you call and
call and
call

If my hopeless hands could grasp
your fading voice
we could whisper through that unbreaking hold
all unspoken declarations—
if only the heavens gave us
time

Might they grace
one wish,
let it be
the stars that fall return
to an embracing
sky

And if not,
charm the birds to sing
the truth:
you are
somewhere, anywhere
smiling

Rounding in another life,
perhaps your heart beats
in the same world as mine
and you are walking.
Sands may fill a thousand times
and a thousand times again,
but I will know
you are walking back to
me