Love in a Hopeless Time and Place

Reach for me from sleep in the midst of a rosy birdsong dawn

to murmur soft sweet reasons to live in my ears

Memorize me, now, before I rise to take my place among the rabble

and a thousand indignities reduce me to rubble  

To be rebuilt each day with the brick and mortar of your touch

My tender self thus hidden behind the stone façade

Of cauterized wounds and unfeeling scars—to survive, and  

Reach for you from sleep in the midst of a rosy birdsong dawn