Compassion

Somehow I'd imagined

compassion enough

to go around—thinking

it would be given readily

by all, tawny and full of light

like the sage honey

I found Friday for a friend

it would be worn next to the skin,

like the blue agate beads

strung for me by a Polish artist

in mountains across the world

it would accompany the needy,

shaggy and immense

like the Great Pyrenees we've met,

the service dog who attends

every local opera from Puccini

to The Pirates of Penzance.

Instead,

this pitiless wing shadow

that has been cast over us.

This staggering

absence and desecration

that I must nevertheless

take up and hold

against my raw-chafed skin,

gently as possibility,

as any broken thing.

—Christie