What Can Be Ours

I know enough about that world

to know it isn’t mine.

Those wet-dark bars that slosh with regulars are not mine;

Those erudite stones of banking buildings aren’t mine either.

Flags that sway in line with politicians and ambassadors do not belong to me,

Nor do the symbols or arbitrations of any nation-state belong to me, or you.

Adrift are we on these seas of meaning, stormy and rolling,

Our ears slick with the salt-water words of too many voices. But come, listen:

There’s a world of words

that’s all mine, and yours.

Mine are the writings on the pages of my heart, and I’ll read through them

With you, our lung-swells growing wide to catch winds of thought and laughter.

Billowing down from the heavens are we then, as we remember what we are:

Creators of our own dream-worlds, reimagined again and again.

It culminates in some great gathering-up,

Like stars under the seafloor,

And there we are watching it:

A world of our own creation,

Belonging only to itself.