Last Rites

(a love poem)

When I am gone,

take up your kitchen broom,

sweep three stars down

from the cobwebbed sky.

Place the first in my coffin;

its bleach-bright light

will suffuse my guttered flame,

waken life’s soiled toil

to the tear-dried home,

prepared.

Place the second

in my tended garden,

where my gardener

will look for me,

where it started.

Place the last on a chain

around your neck;

wear it as a sacrament

of the lights we kindled.

Then when the stars

tumble from the sky

at the end, our shining

will illuminate scars on

love’s invincible face.

from ‘The Call of the Unwritten’