I don’t know what I would do
without the laughter, and the stories,
and the injokes, and the nicknames,
and the endless brotherly mocking,
without the hugs, and the crying,
and the praying in the night,
without the living heart beating
in the silent golden well
pumping love throughout the body
that is us all.
“It’s nice to be around so much
positivity,” she said, and rightly,
for in you there is nothing lacking—
to say ‘negative’ is only to say “not you,”
but in us you are not lacking
and your presence is made known
in the positive:
that is,
in love.
I think I would wither on the vine
had I not love:
such a tender
raucuous
unmistakable
theophany.
This is day 25 of LABIA MUNDA, a series of forty poems during the forty days of Lent.
In Your Embrace 