Held You When I Will (Imperfect Tense Agreement)

I wake this morning missing,

counted the digits of your lengths

and picture them curving not

away from but with me, entwining 

their wisdoms to my press.

You pale nature’s beauty,

halts and moments that always almost

(a glad cacophony of words and images)

coalesce.  Here’s something I knew:  

the universe will end the same moment I do.  

We would be that universe, that constellation,

that knowledge, that knowing, that question,

that answer,

(what emotion are you?)

we will be that why or that how,

that great moment of now when one said, 

belong, we’re found,

and the other only could

nod;

or that time when our eventuals

become our hesitations, 

and we decreed that this will

be our path, our working 

out of the mystery, 

our hereness,

just like everyone before us, before 

the universe ends, 

tenses

not with an ecstatic cry

of recognitions and fittings in the dark,

but with the knowledge at the last 

that all of our great and bright question

marks, 

our workings out of the dark pauses

of the reasoning 

behind the wet and dry, the curve and the line,

the heals and the hurts, in beside all this, 

we are still blind and leaped and cut and born,

to death, for the sake of love 

or the said of the thrill.

We will wake that morning, there

append the digits of our lengths 

together, these ends 

we would know, and our questions, 

with answer.

You pale nature’s grace,

your heartened moment of held,

whispers belong, we fit,

…I would only nod.

© 2012 – Mark A. Douglas – All Rights Reserved