For Rilke

by Cassie Lipowitz

...For the stars, fixed and forever changing,

Are themselves the questions to your answer;

At once, they glow in you, and exist

Amidst the center of the warm, black ether:

The heartspace of all being.

I find myself daring to exist in you;

The time between us stretched out

As in a red rubber band,

Bloody with my own being and suffering.

In this space I become what the questions allow;

Transformation envelops me

And I grow into you

As a young tree grows downward into the ground;

Reaching with tentative roots.

Now, within time’s slippery grasp,

We tremble as two stars,

Knowing that the light perceived is

But a reflection of what has past.

And yet, bequeathed in this space,

We find each other,

Upon and within time’s arc:

The words fall from my hand

As they once breathed from yours.