After Belcourt’s “Bildungssonett”  

Words save me, their ideas, their music.  I can harbor
something or nothing, days or nights, always
attentive to my needs, my wants.  I’m past
the grammar of grief and into expansive longing
for a different landscape, a range of hope.
Let new words burst from me in this country
where love is not hidden, at this river of healing,
where writing is not likely to go poof.  

I need a refuge from trying, from giving my all,
a dry place to loiter, not to struggle, where memories can rain
onto the page.  Everything can be thanked, in time, all told
as new stories, love letters that plunge deep.
Ruptures can be mended, late or soon.  We can climb
into that long horizon, the ground of our expanded selves.