Burning Ground

This is where I live, in the burning ground,
surrounded by the skeletons of loved ones,
the ghosts of the dead, the whispering of poets
that died many hundred years ago.

If we were not precious,
uniqueness could not make us so.
If you found two of me, one in the kitchen
scrambling eggs, and one dressing in the bedroom,
which of us would you judge worthless?
Which would you throw out?

We are not children, dear.
We've seen love check at a pimple, we know
that innocents hang, that children go hungry,
that hearts wear out their cases,
as a knife wears out its sheath.

Here the smoke is greasy in our eyes;
here the caged ribs,
the blackened timbers of a ruined house,
fall: but here is where love remains
when all the rest is burnt.