weak

It should not have come as a surprise that
after all those years of trembling in the wind
a brittle leaf, fearing the moment when
all that is and was and will be held
and treasured and
unleashed in torrents of warm and fluid light, enough to fill this sad world
like sunshine made sweeter
by passage through
a tumbling cloudwall, always darkening and growing less distant, hour by
fleeting hour

that it should so suddenly become clear:
this weak heart will fail
all will come untethered, unmoored
freed and falling and failing and forevermore
stilled.
All will be lost.

There may be greater terrors than that of the deafening
roar - of the moment in its happening - and the depthless chasm
of silence that lies beyond. There
may be descents not meant
to be captured in words, as they defy all reason and
logic and measure of this sad, broken world to find
an almost infinite capacity for joy in the smallest
of wonders.
There may even be
hope, or the ghost of a hope,
for those left behind as
the sky falls away, bluer and brighter and more brilliant
than memory, than the first blush of warm winter sun
and the sweetness of woodsmoke and firstfallen snow and

all the cruel fictions and hard truths and half-whispered
prayers go
and then go
and then, at once, are gone.