Let’s run together, you and I,
Through the floral tapestry woven in the valley
As pastel nectar drips down the sunlit sky.
Leave behind the deadlines and the harsh times,
The rumors curated from the venom of fallen men’s tongues,
The reputations we cultured more than our own hearts.
Live off the pennies from our pockets
And the bucks left in our bank accounts—
And when we’re broke, we’ll pay with a poem.
Lodge in houses that begin to feel like home
When we join in the feasts and the conversations
With foreigners who transform into comrades.
Learn the languages of those lost alongside us—
Those from dynasties of dreamers whose legacies
Have sailed the seven seas and flown the four winds.
Lurk into the forest of unworn paths
With lanterns and folklore for guides
In this velvet, molasses darkness.
Listen to the crickets in the rose thickets
As they sing their lullabies in midnight rhapsody
With the owls scouting from their birches.
Lie down on stones smoothed by the stream
And dream in the peace of knowing we are seen
By the Star Breather who dances over the dust of the ground.
Lock away the stumbling doubts of our tortured souls
In a shroud cloaked eternally in mercy’s crimson stain
And resurrect the faith in miracles we kept as children.
Linger in the liturgies of the saints and martyrs
Spelled in the stained glass and the echoed chants
Until our hearts find their purpose to beat again.
Love the earth in which we were given
And those who inhabit it, the young and the old,
For we were called to be creators in this wasteland.
Let’s run together, you and I,
For there is no point to stay put in one place
When there’s a whole world to explore that’s ours.