Reformation

From a light above fell ribbons downward
Where against curved wood your back ached despite its age
But you knew again from that you piled the pillows too high, on its bend too high yourself
When at last lied down, you wrapped your narrow arm around your waist to fall asleep at night [?]
Uncomfortably by choice
[?] youth you traded real worlds for lucid dreaming ones
Lying on your back when normally you never would
And you drift into them still, now by accident, ending up here, church

Watching ribbons from the [?] fall like a lighting archangels
Staring white felt doves down above the preacher’s stage
Handmadе advent banners beforе ceremonies with blood
Hearing the flick of rice-paper print
The creak of the pews, the voices of your elders saying
“Peace be with you, peace be with you”
In faded Dutch accents, feelings of their strong hands

It was here you learned your future could not change
It was here you learned that life and death before you share one long hallway
Toward a door that you must walk through in the end
So you can’t know where it leads or chose
And it makes you feel whole in some strange way
To see the past you’ve lost take shape in that even in dreams
And it makes you feel terrified too, watching the door
Isn’t all we want to belong to something no matter what?
To pull a thread taut, drag an ancient version of ourselves to our now
And know for the first time how it became and where it all might one day go

You wake at 3 a.m. to the soft voice of her dreams saying
“These are the people who said that you like him would never die
Until you do, and you will
And I will too, just like this baby even longer
Forever
There’s nothing past that door, I know it”
Before she drifts back to sleep where you can’t knock, but it’s okay
Peace be with you

The room is a meadow and all tulips
The bed is a bench in hard old oak
Every father passes candy down the isle
Every child draws war seats in pencil, margins of their bulletin
Every mother thumbs the hymn notes saying
“It’s okay, we’ll wake up for real next time, I know it.”
Or maybe you won’t, but it will always be there, somehow
And one day when your children’s children pull their own thread tight
You will crash into the door to them, flowers in your knotted fists
They will see what you too were, what you gave to them
How you slept this way, even near death, in a rented place that was your church
In a half-drunken speech on love that was your prayer, insert above
And the meadow that was or was not the world you made to live that never really died
They will open their own door their own same way no matter what and walk through it
It will hold the life of everyone in their hands