In your dream of what never happened
a boy turns away from your grief,
and each month’s empty womb tolls a compline
to spring. Once you knew time
as a starving, sumptuous waste
that felt better than pomegranates
ever could taste. Now, despair
keen as a blade drawn again and again
in water run over a stone, and so bright
it might be the fierce start of joy.
You see now what can’t be seen by the young
—the light cast by your own midnight,
mudflats licked to a gleam by the neap tide,
Gawain hewn but still the tale’s hero,
the rood bleeding out into bloom—and you
learn to love the world as it is: gorgeous
in its mortal wound.