Mustard Tree

In all your time and mine,

in the smiling soul's heat and the glacial lack,

sun-soaked days and black,

when delight ran round our lips and spilled like juice,

when sadness hung around us like a noose

we opened up like flowers and sidled together

avoiding too much of the look,

preferred meandering and making spirals,

walking backwards,

bumping shoulders,

hands in pockets,

shields down, scanning.

Until at some point we always reached a crossing, from trail to none,

into the holiest of the wild ground

where the next step had no warranty and no recourse

where the fig trees grew no leaves.

I always took one more step

and called you in.

You never came

refusing to be known,

withholding the best and last,

the ungovernable,

inchoate glory, dark-glassed.

Why so scared?

There was only you

and me

and I am no angry God.