The rain has washed the edges from the day,
And left the world a watercolour blur;
The certainties I gathered on my way
Dissolve like ink, and nothing stays as sure.
I used to think the world was built of stone,
Of reason, purpose, promises and years;
But all the things I thought were firmly known
Have proved as frail as tissue, wet with tears.
A thousand truths are spoken every hour,
And every one is dressed in borrowed light;
The proudest towers tremble in their power,
The clearest answers change before the night.
Yet there are two things I have come to know,
Two steady lights wherever I may go.
There is a Kathy, somewhere in my heart,
Whose presence needs no argument or proof;
No distance can persuade us we're apart,
No storm can take away our common roof.
And there is one whose name I need not say,
Whose warmth has found a home as deep as hers;
Who brings a different brightness to the day,
And makes the quiet heart within me stir.
I love them both, not halves of something whole,
Nor rivals for a place that can't be shared;
But each a separate harbour for my soul,
Each loved entirely, each entirely cared.
And lovelier still, these women are themselves
Two friends whose kindness neither takes nor delves.
I would not set one star against the other,
Nor weigh the sunlight separately from rain;
Their friendship is a gift to one another,
And loving both brings neither loss nor pain.
For love is not a vessel with a brim,
Where filling one must leave the other dry;
It is a light that does not grow more dim
Because another candle burns nearby.
And if the world should question what is true,
Or ask which love is greater, which is best,
I have no scale to measure these two
Whose separate places give my spirit rest.
The balance is not cold, nor calculated;
It lives because each love is celebrated.
There is no need to promise what will be,
No need to bind tomorrow to today;
I ask no more than each should still be free
To give her love in her own chosen way.
For anything compelled would turn to dust,
And anything possessed would cease to shine;
The strongest bonds are fashioned out of trust,
Not out of claims that someone must be mine.
So let the world construct its paper walls,
Its solemn rules, its castles made of sand;
Let every confident prediction fall,
And all its certainties slip through my hand.
For when the wind has scattered what seemed true,
I know the ground beneath me: it is you.
Not one, but two; and neither less for this.
Two lives, two voices, each a different song;
Two forms of tenderness, two kinds of bliss,
Two places where my wandering thoughts belong.
And if the rain should find me far from home,
And all the roads ahead grow indistinct,
I shall not fear the distance yet to roam,
Nor mourn the broken certainties I've linked.
For somewhere in this changing, fragile place
Are two dear friends whose love has made me strong;
And I can hold the thought of either face
And know that something solid still belongs.
The world may be as thin as paper seems;
But these two loves are stronger than my dreams.
And when the evening takes the fading sky,
When all the clever words have had their say,
I need no final answer to the why,
No grand philosophy to light my way.
Only the simple wonder that they live,
That I may love them, and that they are friends;
That love can grow through everything we give,
And need not be diminished when it bends.
Let other truths be written on the rain,
And washed away before the morning's sun;
What matters most will quietly remain,
Not two loves struggling to become just one.
But two, distinct, and beautifully so:
The only solid things I truly know.