Humboldt

On a prairie patchwork blanket of earth

Life was interrupted at the crossroads

One life, and the many, fused together and apart

In an instant and then forever.

Ice had moved them there

Pushing their dreams

Until they glided down that highway

Towards their passion and their peace.

We were moved too

By their sudden return to the earth

Knowing, remembering,

How fragile that crystal glaze was.

We looked to the other highway of social data streams

To divide our tears and multiply our love for them

Compounding it, until the whole world

Met us at the crossing.

There the checkered blanket now bore their portrait

Imprinted on our minds and hearts

Causing us to trade our clothes

For the jerseys of our heroes.

We then knelt down our sticks by the doorway

Inviting their spirits to return home

And escape the grasp of wild winter’s winds

That would never let them move on to spring.

Then suddenly soon the seasons switched

While we were left wondering why

All these opposing forces

Collided in the first place.

Somehow we learned that we

Had been through that intersection

Where the past consoled the future

And considered the true impact of their exchange.

How one life, and the many,

Fused together and apart by organs

Offered by our hero who gave his precious gift

For completing his years on the quilt.

And how we marked these unions too

Of people and places

Time and transition

Sorrow and sympathy

With crosses of hockey sticks

Green and yellow ribbons

Sunflowers and roses

Angel wings and skates

And yes our great banner

That always bears the emblem

Of season change as if to say

This too will be our rite of passage.