When everything’s falling,
when everything’s broken,
when all is ravel and rubble
and ransacked and ruin
and the world is a stuttering,
guttering blunder,
a plundered and ravaged thing,
that is when wonder arrives on the wings
of forgiving, and living arrives
on the wings of the dead, and
devotion arrives in the wreckage
of loss. And if to love
is to risk being tumbled
and fumbled and wrung out
and sprawled, to love
is also to trust there are hands
that will raise us,
amaze us with kindness,
calm hands that will lift up
our hurt-heavy hearts
as if it they’re as light
as red leaves in the fall.