The Last Morning

We’ve spent a week
forgetting our other selves –
no cell phones ringing our brains
no email knocking at cyber doors.

This place. The sounds: woodpeckers
and sparrows, even screaming pterodactyls.

We can bring it home in photo and word,
but only the heart can remember
our singing out over the Lake
or night music wrapping around us on the porch.

We can pretend we understand peace,
do skits on delivering babies,
even make a meadow into a theater – Incredible!
But we can’t pretend each other.

How your lives entwined into my own
this week and travelers from Angola
to Teko wove a basket of community.

And eye for an eye is one kind of life,
but I say for seven days you’ve bathed
in holy water, torched your old identity
in the fire. Return to your other world
reconciled, free,

And wear this week’s beauty like a scar.

Gayle Kaune
July 23, 2006