Horizon

My father taught me Love's warmth, but not Love's respect.
I closed my eyes and braced
at his racing through life
over a hundred cliffs,
landing again and again in the same wet ocean.
I warmed myself by those fires-
those momentary explosions-
after days-between swimming in cold water,
back to the same shore,
in an endless cycle of hot and cold.

As I floated I wondered
where we might have arrived
had we instead found the pace named consent,
like a spell or a prayer summoned from
wherever it got lost in the braid of our lineage,
and instead diligently followed
the winding path that hugged the mountain.

When he died I didn't know
how to not follow
or how to follow
I did not know how to close
so I could open
again
I did not know
how to stop lending
a ghost my oxygen.

To heal from this I had to go
into a very tight cave
for a long time
so I could find my edges
enough to fold inward toward
the radiant blade of Love's other face.
Like an arrow: a prayer retrieved,
blazen, shot out
from the gut of me
restitching the braided stars.

Now I see:
without the sun, the flower would wither,
but without the flower,
who would alchemize light into liquid green,
then pressurize it upward upon a spine,
to spill with vigor into a face,
and blossom in eyes
radiant enough for this thing
called love
to happen?

He blazes
She drinks
She labors
He weeps
They love
without linearity
and follow
an ever receding, unnameable horizon.

Let's go there.

To the top of the mountain, it's not too late.
Let me sleep there, stars overhead.
Let my dreams be the first seeds
that whisper in the dark, cool air.

When I wake I'll move to where, under moonlight
they sprouted, upon the path, showing me the next
tiny, golden steps.

Father, I am a horizon.
Respect me.

At my edge your dreams can be
warm enough
to germinate,
and cool enough
to lift upon their sovereign wings,
and fly.

Father, you are a horizon too.
How can I tell a story that honors both of us?

I'll be a California poppy,
in awe of how you became the sun in your final hours
and equally in awe of how, after dusk,
my body knew to fold in and sip
its own nectar.

Did you know there is a sun in the center of the earth?
And in the center of every cell that makes a human lung?

As the angels, like honeybees lifted
your pollen from your flower,
the last thing you clung to was breath,
was the rattle
of the suns in your lungs
offering every last
golden drop.