On evening-dark stairs, a child listens
to her parents consider their small creation
who won’t eat other creatures. Their
careful argument speaks less of disagreement
than to the truth of shared belonging
– each to the other.
This child welcomes never-chosen orange, always,
as her favorite – the last red-orange flaming
of the setting sun; and favors, too, its compliment:
the deepest blue of twilight, of the passage between worlds.
She says, “I’ve never had a hero.” Then, unwitting poet,
sings of her Ulysses and her Gilgamesh, chants
their steps through desolation – injured, weak, unwanted –
into light. In her own heroes’ journey, she says,
“It would be nice to feel
I’m where I’m supposed to be.”
Gilgamesh sings back through time:
We are forever children, twilight safe,
eternal heroes in despair. Through bright fires,
cold seas, and darkened skies. Through all the
passages between all worlds, none are lost.
We belong – you to us and we to you.
