It has not been such a long time
That I should forget
You lying in the orchard
Naked and unafraid;
Or the tenderness
Of Cummings’ verse
You gave me then, and
I now
Carry in my heart;
Or, the reach of your arms
Reflected in the mirror
That has one hundred times
Closed the distance
Between us
It has not been such a long time
But a life time
To grasp
the cosmology borne of the intensely felt,
That flung the stars across the darkness,
Of an intimate yet infinite universe,
Shining epiphanies,
We now see,
Their origins,
Both gentle and violent obscured.
So, they beckon us to name them all,
That we may remember who we are
And what we have become.
David Heaney, 2017