Heart Wall

Heart Wall

We walk in our garden like monks in meditation.
Hearts beating together like plucked harp strings,
We are bowed together like wings.

Once there had been a wall my child-self had built
out of mud pies and Queen Anne’s Lace.

My heart turned it
into obsidian rock
black like the deepest pool of sleep
black but not sinister
sinister
the word makes my father laugh.

You smiled and said
those who do not understand
darkness
cannot see light when it is there.
I will sit with you

in the fertile air
in our open oleander grove
until the Apache Tears are gone.
There are parts of you
only you can love

Though you do not have to
love yourself alone.