Children of the borderland,
intrepid space travelers,
this will not be your last winter.
These painful lights-
hard blinking eyes
of some angry god-
will not shutter suddenly,
enveloping you
in your mother’s embrace.
The desert at your back,
strewn with your patient bundles,
will not sing the coyotes
to sleep with your song.
The end is not in sight,
and it never will be,
oh you seekers,
sons and daughters of my heart.
There is no mapped world.
This truth you hold under your ribs,
where most mortals, entangled
in blood and sinew,
house lungs, not dreams.
Rivers change course suddenly,
become monstrous and then,
wistful as nymphs,
tell sad stories
to the stones that line their banks.
The skies, unstreaked
by the glare of dirty neon,
are still impossible to read.
But take comfort in these things.
No border impedes you.
May your narrow feet, pointed
as ever toward the moon,
never lose their path.
May your hearts, undisguised,
beat sturdily
in the direction of
new worlds, oceans as yet
undiscovered.
May you hold up your small hands
to your eyes
and spreading your fingers wide
see through them to a world
so plentiful and strange
that even the gods,
those clamorous creatures,
grow silent with wonder.
