>Crossing the sky
we walk together
as though floating
across dark waters,
with dogs running
in the stars,
and gods, suspended
like liquid crystals,
and again
like mirrors.

Our footprints tracing
passions,
our progress marking
out rhythms,
now mixing
with decaying flesh,
now fading
below cliffs
looming over us
like unconfessed sins
in the half-light.

We are
only shadow figures,
our dim movements remind me
of smoke in a twilight orchard
dissipating among the branches,
or the non-substance
of memories
and empty hands
calling us back.
And in those memories
we too are suspended
like crystals, shining
in the quiet ether,
with the ocean,
invisible,
always on our left.

So here in the very midst,
like apparitions
intersecting heavens,
carrying hearts
like precious jewels,
we advance through the darkness,
across the sand,
nearer now
to the infinite
and the end of time,
nearer now
to perfection
and final chapters,
holding out for the
immeasurable.

That’s what I thought about it,
About walking, and dogs along the beach,
and friends with shimmering sand
reflecting beneath the brilliant stars above,
and how we talked of dreams with eternity
in our hearts calling us away, and how
the ocean seemed to reflect a part of God
that was unknowable, and about how small
we really are compared to everything else,
and how much we really need each other.
Anyway, that’s what I’d say
if you asked me.

I wrote this poem in 1998. I repost it here for National Poetry Month and to remember a great weekend with good friends at the Oregon coast.