Through the Gate

Snowflake
Borne on the wind in a tumble of frost,
as worthy of notice as a white speck
in a whitening sky, I will glide.
I will rest, sometimes, in a white hillblanket,
then be tugged up again until, shaking and small,
I am drawn by the tug of desire,
the inevitability of hope, to your door.
To the squat arid shack where you toil,
hopeless, dutiful, parched, in your mantle
of pain. I will float like the seed
of a dandelion, white and small, in through the cracks.
Here is where I will rest, again.
A snowflake on your palm.

Hold me close. I cannot heal you.
But I can be the spark, too small to remark upon,
which you hold in your closed fist
or in an unassuming pendant at your throat.
I can be the tiny bead that runs along your skin
when you grow so thirsty, so wrung
into leathery cords by your work,
that even tiny drops delight you.
Love, I have no strength to break
the shackles at your aching feet.
I am smaller than a raindrop. Nothing
to anyone but you.

I know nothing. I can promise you nothing.
But when I close my eyes, I remember that a snowflake,
resting lightly just so, begins a slow slide
until the mountain in full roars down.
The smallest seed can put out green hesitance
which widens, grows bark, gives shade.
Its roots can wear a boulder into sand.

I do not know
if I am such a seed.
And the world weighs so much.

But you are holding out your hand,
and I am here, for now.
And if you hold me I will hold you,
for as long as we can bear the weight of hope,
of fearful tenderness, of snow.
May 22nd, 2016