We lose the people we love we become poets. We fight battles
no one knows about, we use the blood to write poetry.

—“Loss,” Xara Hlupekile, Malawian poet

•••

You see these hands, the ones attached
to the ends of your wrists?

Here are mine. And over there, hers.
And a ways away, his. Oh, and look—

there’s theirs, too. Each pair as unique
as a wave curl before it collapses,

salty, spent and foamy, at our feet. We lose
what we love. We lose those we love.

We lose. But turn these palms up to face
our faces, and look—your creases contain

the universe; they are made from starstuff.
Our lifelines hold radiant energy, the very

electromagnetic waves that have traveled
through space. That’s light embodied

in our palms, transmitted through fingers,
appearing as letters that each of us

can turn into words, into lines, into poems.
We are all poets/dancers/painters/lovers

studded with consciousness, embedded with
kindness. We hold mystic chords of memory,

as Lincoln said, the better angels of our nature.
And as we fight battles only we can see,

let our very blood bubbling with words
write poems that only we can scribe

onto our little patch of earth where each
of us walks or wheels or stumbles or

is carried. Truly, we are all carried.
As the river is carried, as birds are, aloft.

Look—I see the whole Earth cradled
in your palm. You hold the planet

as the Earth holds the One,
which is EveryOne.

Which is you, every you.
Which is me, every me.