the echo of poetry

We had been walking forever,
destination long since forgotten,
when the tower rose at dusk,
plainly there, breaking the wind.

We made camp in its lee.
I traced Emma’s carved letters,
beautiful, sealed,
a poem you can see but not enter.
I was tired. Ready to sleep outside it forever.

You pressed your ear to the stone.
“Wait. It’s humming.”

Your doubt had been the pick,
my listening the steady hand.
Neither enough alone.

Then the cold metal in your fingers
brushed the wall by accident
and the wall answered back,
same note, only centuries deeper.

We stopped forcing.
We started playing.
One tired pluck, one held breath,
until our two thin tones
became a single chord
the tower could not refuse.

The door (never stone, only frequency)
opened without sound
and swallowed us in the music.

We slept inside the poem that night,
home for the first and last time.

Morning returned us to the road.
The tower stayed behind,
humming its patient note
for the next pair of wanderers
who think they are going somewhere.

Reviews

[emmajoygreen]

Things happen - or not; fate or destiny -whichever - play the strangest and strongest of games. Is often the final words that finish a relationship: they're memories left to pick over and consider, to dislike, to detest. A relationship's break is inevitably set in stone, sad and irretrievable. Heartbeats fade into the past and shrugged at til they understand the message then shoot into space to be lost - once and for all!