In a desert far away at night

There is a dark and empty pit

in the desert sand

with whom I spoke

for an evening when

it held my voice.

It understands

loss.

Once upon a time, it held an ocean.

That dark and starless night,

I knelt beside the block-wide empty pit -

slated for construction - trapped between traffic.

Like a hollow ear still turned to open sky

it received, like a broken offering,

a shared, full-shouldered sob,   

the salty heave of a distant wave, 

and could not see the tiny oceans in my eyes; 

Nor could I hear its oceans past.

There was time, and room, there in the night, in the desert, in the empty pit that no more held an ocean,

with even the sand dug out of it;

there was room in that container

to hold the kind of howl 

that unwraps itself around someone bereft.