after Catie Rosemurgy

Seeing, excitement, no-wake lakes.
The category of photographs that survived a move, all of which
have curled in the hot, short summers.

Sugar maples and their forgotten limbs that stray
into the misty morning road. The father holding back
his tears with oil-stained knuckles.

Spice cabinets. Spiders. The intense
empathy found only in the kind.
Every smile remembered.

beyond this unkempt way,
a patch of meadows free and vast
where joy will rise and
chains will fall—a city clean
and forest green,
where the sun will rise and
never fall.
There is a crystal river flowing—
flowing clear and flowing bright,
where former things have passed away
and tears will never—
never fall.
And though this is our future still,
we kneel to this—
this finished throne,
for when we fall, again we will
stand tall
stand tall
stand tall along the way.