A Pew for Carl Sandburg

Love is a deep and a dark and a lonely
and you give it deep and give it dark
and give it in your lonely hiking.
Then come the windfires
and the breath of wind over many flowers
winding its way up mountains of lonely flowers
waiting in firelicked whispers
waiting in Pentecost drench
wanting the music of windbreaths
so you can give love as it comes keening
as it comes with a voice and a face
as you make a Word of it
talking to us a word worth keeping
and we stone-sealed it for a keen keeping
and we find it to be overflowing
and we give it away and yet it stays overflowing.

like a story heard over and over again
like one story being the long stacks of history
like leaves of bruised reeds bending low
and bending to be never broken.