Never dreamed we’d come to this,

after all those ardent years:

you and I here once more, alone together,

draining the last of the flavour from these leaves.

The last brew’s like the first brew –

empty of taste, like warm and gentle water;

leaves steeped too many times.

After so long, we should know better.

But still we’ve never learnt the art

of opening hands in release:

we always held on too tightly, too long,

clinging so close to our worlds that they drowned us –

and now here we are, full circle,

fading into an aftertaste of whiteness;

our end the very image of our beginning,

but headed the other direction.

And so here we are, just you and I,

with our hands on the table, not touching.

Dreamers and drifters, the pair of us,

in a search for some resonate shore

that’s pulled us, like waves, both apart and together…

but at the end of it all, though we’ve never found grace,

there’s still us: just a man and a woman,

held and haloed in the soft kitchen light

and sitting up with each other, in mercy.

<< / >>