Last Rites
(a love poem)
When I am gone,
take up your kitchen broom,
sweep three stars down
from the cobwebbed sky.
Place the first in my coffin;
its bleach-bright light
will suffuse my guttered flame,
waken life’s soiled toil
to the tear-dried home,
prepared.
Place the second
in my tended garden,
where my gardener
will look for me,
where it started.
Place the last on a chain
around your neck;
wear it as a sacrament
of the lights we kindled.
Then when the stars
tumble from the sky
at the end, our shining
will illuminate scars on
love’s invincible face.
from ‘The Call of the Unwritten’