A Poem: There Should Be

There should be a room in the deepest heart of the day,
in which we can cry, where webs of autumn shadow dissipate
against the shock of unexpected warmth: words of a stranger,
voice of a color, flame of a dance.

And yet, the heart grows tired, and the hands grow tired
as we are, the unemployed—
starting winter cars, slowly heating our windshields
for essential clarity of vision, as forests shed
their leaves, and thin lines of water become trees.

Tell me where this room is—not escape, but a meeting
of one survivor and another. Tell me
where it is I can watch the news of Robert Champion
without closing my eyes, and still see. I am looking
for that room; perhaps the place where warriors go
to weep is one where there are neither warriors nor victims,
a room where words have no walls. If here, or elsewhere
a woman calls for her missing son, then her song rises
in my voice like morning between rafters of stone.