Public Republic

Jeremy Paden

Photo: THE…

There were words we never said.
I thought it was because we did not need to,
only children point to the ghostly moon

in the blue sky and speak its name.
Can we say love and mean a year of Jubilee—
all that compounded debt in the chambers

of our hearts, cancelled; that land taken,
cattle stolen, returned to the sound of bells
and the laughter of children; the world again

put to rights, because we have taken
our secret hurts to the sea and beat them out
on the rocks and left them to dry in the sun?