Remember,
for all of us human beings
who are not yet past
loving (and I would wager
that is almost all
of us who drag breath
into our lungs),
the earth is wide enough that there is a place
where we love in common.

For any two, any unlikely two,
that place exists:
the football pitch,
the concert hall,
the protest march,
the baby’s bedside,
the last unspelunked cavern
beneath Guizhou.

Sharing potential with a stranger
is not adequate, I know, to the task
of turning the firing lines
into gardening collectives.
Until we are all together on the mountain,
the parts of me that are not theirs
may still be broken.

But for we explorers searching
for the lost temples of communion,
there is no hopelessness,
only the adventure
between breaths.