This Verse

What fantasies sustain
when you are
worn bare by disappointment?
What green gardens
cultivating
beneath leafy lashes?

This body aches and bends
but surrenders to cold rain
a gray day promising
nothing but to feel warmth
when I find home again

The weight of your absence
vast silence
where your laughter stood
pulls me from this lofty perch
fifteen stories high
to lay down and touch
soft earth and stone
long for, wish for
home

Please be gentle
you are worn and weary
curling in upon yourself
because you do not know
cannot know
the way ahead
some days only silence
greets you
Please be patient
whatever it seems
this is not yours forever

Snow may come tonight
wrap us all gently in sleep
and silence most deep

It is unseasonably cold here
snow drifted against trunks
on ledges and icy panes
yet these seabirds take flight
make their appointed rounds
without thought of summer
or south or any day but this

I see this photo of you
with your kid brother
both of you smiling
before Afghanistan
What was it
to know you then
so bright and full of promise
most of all the one
you made to your mother
to live through it
I know you now only quietly
Was it war that sobered you
or were you always so
fathomless?

So let's get down
to what it will take
to woo and win me:
Showing up every day
as loving and brave
as you have ever dared to be

I tried to keep my heart unbroken
gathered each bead from the severed strand
pieced together shards of blue and white
I'll be alright if I just keep going
I told myself
But it would have been better
to simply name this grief
stop to sob in the middle of the sidewalk
the grocery aisle
the subway as it burrowed
its way through the heart
of this great beating city
until I knew
devastation is the beginning 
of the miracle I am meant to live

If poets had a rule book
page seventeen would remind
one must reference fate
or better destiny
leave the reader with
something other to inspire
beyond this wintry expanse
and the sharp edge
of a cutting wind