The Final Say

Wading into deeper waters.
The suck of cold, black streams.
The bristling palmiets barbing
at our ankles, splayed beneath my step:
as if trampling were the only way
to keep myself afloat.

We were always bound
to meet with my undealt-with mires.
To stumble into years of piling silt
and overgrowth, to stir it clouding
to the surface — this the purpose of 
repentance: what must die
must first be looked at, sifted out
and spoken of as what it is

then washed away, downstream,
to be forgotten. Love uncovers
and then covers, if I let it:
helps me slowly out the muck
like soldiers grasping forward,
one arm free, the other on
another’s shoulder.

The upward way, the downward —
were these always equal,
drowning would not terrify.
The truer downward way,
the deeper way, is through:
the trudging through the river,
over piled shelves of sand
and ribs of lacing reeds,
but reaching always for the bank.

Quiet in the car back home.
Our change of clothes. The colour
of the cloud-surrounded fields.
Patient patchwork — love and anger
piling over one-another,
my old anger, other, older Love.
How is it Love has always had
the final say? Let it be that way
with us, in colder, deeper currents.

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Photo by Trude Jonsson Stangel on Unsplash

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