Grace and Old Atlantis

Let’s get out of here, you and me. But not
to any of those expected places,
the ones where they’ll look for us:
Ireland, Tokyo, New Guinea, Middle-Earth, Alderaan.
Let’s go into that old room in your old house,
the one with all the spider-webs
and the ghost of the dead girl
crying over her broken roller skates
and throwing blood at us,
the one where we once discovered a lake
with dead men floating to the top
to speak to us of dread things: the ships
of old Atlantis, the ones that carried world-destroying
crystals, the crews the king cast out because he could find no grace
in them, whose captains plotted and returned, and at the docks
where the sailors sang they unleashed a throne of blood
and swept Atlantis away.

The king could have saved them, remember?
But he was a coward. Let’s go save them,
go push the king to his fate so his people live.

Or if not that, let’s go down to the dead-end street
with the woods, where the trees slant crazily
and the stream winding through
seems like one of your mother’s unending sentences,
the ones like the prayers at church
that start off so innocent, bless us and our endeavors,
and grow to include the county, the state, the country,
the president, the world. Your mother,
bless her soul, has no idea of the world
we inhabit. Probably better that way.

Let’s go sit under the trees, feel our souls
slant in an empathic crazy tumult,
let our conversation slant sideways,
and revel in the grace we’ve found in each other.