​​Love Song from My Future Self                     
 
                                                           — after Jorie Graham

I have survived, astonished,
into the middle of a new century.

How do I reconcile  
such fortune? I've indulged

the abysses in every blessing —
let my light fall prey

to so many who readily
use frailty to raise walls

against their own dissolution.
I've mapped the tender,

the broken, the ache, tried
not to give in to a life

of writing in anger —
of holding the glass as the sun

illumined all its flaws.
But the earth said

remember me.
I remember whales

drowned in human livelihood —
birds seething plastic —

the air's secret darkness
unmaking our lungs. I remember

not knowing how to wield my voice.
What could I offer other than resignation

as my life settled into a gaunt blur
which held only

all I failed to salvage? So now
I strive to square the debt

that is my breath — to disavow
siren Despair — because if grief

is yearning with no one to ease it,
to write in anger
 
is the only way to write in love.