All We Have
In the first ringing of shock, in the shadow of the mushroom cloud
As we shake and blink and try to understand this new landscape of death
There is no hand to pull us through but our own gut
and the same scream that brought us through the red tunnel of our own birth
Faith, pure as molten lava
We drink of it, with the terrible thirst of a man in the desert
For that’s all we have
And then, when we are punished by our very survival
Surveying the ghosts that once were our bedfellows
The tattered remains of our cherished familiarity
Crumpled like a lost doll under a still smoldering tree
There is no hand to pull us though
But that of death
And in his bony grasp we understand the power of surrender
and in the letting go of all we knew, we feel a strange lightness
And begin to ascend
As in the wake of every storm, there is a stony silence
And although we look out from the logs and lashings of a crude shelter
our view is clear, and the sunrise paints our cheek with mango
And in gazing closer at the crater that was our life
we see the small green curl of a leaf, curious and infinitely precious
New growth from the dreams that never die, even if seared and buried
And we water them with tears of gratitude
For that’s all we have
(4)
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