Let Us Go

let us go now, you and I
before the snow gets too high
before the light gets too low
and bring in the wood that I
need for the fire

I will not let the minutes pass
and re-pass in this room
as I come and go, for all I am
and all I have been
is worth more than I know

I have been higher than most
known lower places than some
and I skinned my knees on the
way up and the way down
as I saw my hopes stretched
across the sky and pinned there

like a patient in a hospital
bed, rods drilled through bone
with pain a dark companion -
I have fostered the minutes
of my life like they were
orphaned to the world - I have

kept their embers alive in the
strongest wind, and the strangest
people I have known have been
in and out of my rooms
like there was no closed door
like what a hallway is for

and now, at this late hour, as
the gloom descends, I have
learned the hard way on what
a woman depends:  on her

blood and her bone, her brain
and the strength of her arm, her
strong body and keeping
herself warm in the frost and
the snow:  I watched them go,
the two of them, and all I could
do was wave - there is no

holding back the tide of change
and the change of climate
in a world grown hard with men.
This is the home of the brave.

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