Day 10: A Love Poem

Walking

Days ago, one of our boys asked:

how many steps to heaven?

while we were walking on a Sunday

through a park designed to let

the grieving have at least the horizon

to ease their sense of continued loss

with the evidence of perpetual growth.

There, in the autumnal distance,

change is as natural as the death

this space was laid out to memorialize.

Nothing is out of place from that far,

nothing is unquestionable, not even

the distance between innocence & loss,

between wanting to know everything

& doubting that answers exist.

Holding your hand & theirs, 

nothing was absent of truth. 

Any answer would suffice, 

but neither of us bothered 

to decide on one, 

but gathering strength beyond tears, 

we held each other tighter 

& went on down the path 

that led to the rest of the day, 

the rest their lives,

the rest of the time we have left,

whatever it may be, 

to hold on as tightly as we can, 

to know that it is the moments like these 

that bridge the distance between growth & collapse,

that solidify the pleasure that invents heaven 

and gives the idea of God temporary proof against doubt.