Reformation

Reformation
From the light above, fell ribbons downward
Where against curved wood, your back ached despite its age
And you knew again from that, you piled the pillows too high
Or else bent too high yourself when at last lying down
You wrapped your narrow arm around her waist to fall asleep at night and did

Uncomfortably by choice, the way in youth
You traded real worlds for lucid dreaming ones
Lying on your back, where normally you never would
And you drift into them still now
But by accident ending up here, church

Watching ribbons from the apse fall like alighting archangels
Staring white felt doves down above the preacher's stage
Handmade advent banners before ceremonies of blood
Hearing the flick of rice paper print
The creak of old pews, the voices of your elders saying
"Peace be with you, peace be with you"
In faded Dutch accents
The feeling 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 you must walk through in the end
'Til you can't know where it leads or choose

That it makes you feel whole in some strange way
To see the past you've lost take shape like that, even in dreams
And it makes you feel terrified too, watching the door

Is it all we want to belong to something no matter what? To pull a thread taut?
Drag an ancient version of ourselves toward now and know for the first time
How we became and where it all might one day go

You awake at 3:00 a.m. to the soft voice of her dream, 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, but longer, forever
And there's nothing past that door, I know it"
Before she drifts back to sleep where you can't now and it's okay
Peace be with you

The room is a meadow and all tulips
The bed is a bench and hard old oak
Every father passes candy down the aisle
Every child draws war scenes in pencil in the margins of their bulletin
Every mother thumbs the hymnal and sings and it's okay
You will 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 come crashing through the door to them
Flowers in your rotted fists
They will see what you two were and what you gave to them

How you slept this way even near death
In a rented place that was your church
In a half-dreamt speech on love that was your prayer and sermon both
In a meadow that was and was not the world
You made to live and never really die in

They will open their own door, their own same way
No matter what and walk through it
They will hold the life of everyone in their hands