The Same Unknown

Before the years had learned their weight,

Before the mind had measured fate,

Two distant lines were drawn in air

Unknowing they were anchored there.



They crossed in youth

 a passing thread,

No words between

Our lives within.

No omen marked the hour or place,

No prophecy in time or space.



The seasons turned. The maps grew wide.

Each walked a separate countryside.

Ambition, error, loss, and flame

We carved the weather just the same.



What once was brief grew dim and small,

A minor note beneath it all.

Yet minor notes, when years grew long,

Return to steady crafting a song.



Then distance, tired of holding ground,

Bent inward with a much smaller sound.

Not storm nor sign nor trumpet call,

A quiet word that changed it all.



Two currents met in open space,

Not rushed, not wild, but face to face.

A recognition stripped of art.

We loved the answers from our hearts.



For love, when tested against the span

Of pride and will and wounded plan,

Must either shatter in demand

Or learn the strength of an open hand.



There came the fracture  clean and slow

No violent tide, no bitter blow

Just gravity adjusting weight

As hope leaned hard against restraint.



One held a lamp against the night,

Believing distance bends to light.

The other, steady in its course,

Kept wider law above its force.



Thus followed days of tempered speech,

Where nearness stayed just out of reach.

A careful balance, thin yet clear,

Of presence kept, but not drawn near.



Not strangers, no! The thread remained,

Though slowly tested, pulled and strained;

For some designs the heavens frame

Are altered shape, but not by name.



Two bodies circling one bright fire

With different measure of some desire.

One certain orbit could restore,

One certain it should ask no more.



And yet the system did not fall,

For greater laws outlive us all.

That what is true does not decay

Though form and fortune shift their way.



We were not ruined by the strain,

Nor purified by loss or pain;

We simply stood where we were will last

Two present figures with a past.



If time should ever draw the lines

That bends the separate into signs,

It will not be by force or plea

But by the will of gravity.



Until that hour, the sky is wide.

Each keeps its strength. Each keeps its stride.

A still I love you. No vow undone

But written in the same unknown.



And if the light we once both knew

Was not illusion, but was true,

Then even distance, close and far,

Still answers to a common star.



So let the heavens turn as they will.

The deeper truth that holds us still.

Not lost, not claimed, not left alone

But somehow written in the same unknown.

Poetry reading ambient