CALL ME BELOVED

it’s always been when I’m standing at the edge
where the cosmos has spoken loud enough
for me to listen.

there was that first whisper at the car accident, when
I saw the horizon of red and blue forming a blockade
surrounding the tree my brother’s car wrapped around.
it was after I saw him sitting on the back of the ambulance,
shocked and unscathed. I pushed through the sea of sirens
and broke through to the wreck, pulling free his scattered things,
when I heard it – or felt it – a sureness and calm
that the moment didn’t seem to deserve.

I found it again on the beach – years later, as if deliberately
discarded and buried in the sand. it was a late summer night,
we were perfectly drunk on beer and the moment –
standing young and proud on the edge of the world
as it bled down into the ocean. it was sudden, I looked
but no-one else heard it, carried soft on the breeze
and booming as the tide crashed onto the shore, but
I wrote what I heard, even a year later – when
just the thought of it was enough to turn my heart
into a tremor in my chest.

I’ll be standing on the subway platform tomorrow morning,
watching the sun climb up to set the tracks glowing white hot
and I hope I’ll find it there, lost somewhere in the mobs of people
or shuffled aside by pigeon feet so I can take it
and know how to say it at this crucially insignificant moment –
one where all of the words are already written, waiting
for the voices at the edges of things to set them astir.