Our Comp@ss Rose

A collaborative reading

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COMPASS

This year the size of a sea

Sick to its stomach.

Like a page, we are only legible

When opened to one another.

For what is a book

If not foremost a body,

Waiting & wanting-

Yearning to be whole,

Full of itself. This book is full

Of ourselves. The past is one

Passionate déjà vu,

One scene already seen.

In history's form, we find our own faces,

Recognizable but unremembered,

Familiar yet forgotten.

Please.

Do not ask us who we are.

The hardest part of grief

Is giving it a name.

The pain pulls us apart,

Like lips about to speak.

Without language nothing can live

At all, let alone

Beyond itself.

Lost as we feel, there is no better

Compass than compassion.

We find ourselves not by being

The most seen, but the most seeing.

We watch a toddler

Freewheel through warm grass,

Not fleeing, just running, the way rivers do,

For it is in their unfettered nature.

We smile, our whole face cleared

By that single dazzling thing.

How could we not be altered.