This Verse

I don't know what to tell you
Sometimes a life just gets better
in spite of itself

You awake, startled
fists wet and clenched
an animal you do not know
howling in your chest

Maybe even this drowning rain
is a gift
I didn't know to wish for

I see you with new eyes
a troubling spell finally broken
You are as human now
as I have ever been

I see your light after all these years
a steady flame behind thin glass
shielded from every beating wing

How many other lips
pressed this cup
warm and ever-longing?

There is no balm, no Gilead
past, present, future
but infinite desert

We sit here lonely
fingers tapping half-filled cups
tea and gentle hope

In those days when the now forgotten
lifted eyes at solstice and equinox
it was the serpent God, king
who make what sense there was
of the known and knowing world

Now he have abandoned king and God
relegated serpents to the myths of Eden
our eyes fixed on other stars
we no longer know or believe
and are full of forgetting

Collect me now, here
as your very own love
hold close and always