The Crossing

It has always been bought, and the price was always energy —
a crown’s gold, seventy-five billion dollars,
one stolen year of a star.
The instrument changes. The hunger does not.

You cannot carry the fire that far. You have to be thrown.
The true crossing is the hand that opens,
the slow clock ticking while home runs backward,
a child stepping onto a far star barely older
while centuries close like water
over every hand that waved goodbye.

It cost the harness-maker’s son a burning harbor at his back.
It cost the boy on the bridge the one look he was told not to take.
It will cost this child a sun, and worse than a sun — the time.
Everything you cannot carry, and the one cold thing you can.

Go on, says the father, pressing the iron into the hand.
Go on, says the bell. Go on, says the drained and shining sun.
His hand. Now mine. Now yours. The same hand.
The same bolt, worn smoother with every crossing,
passing two hundred and ninety-six years
and four light-years and one ordinary morning
at a table where a child first heard the bell.

The bell never priced the company.
It priced the family at the table —
and it is ringing now — brass, stellar, or yet to be cast —
for you, where you sit reading this.
Everything has a price. Everything is energy. Everything is for sale.
Everything except the cold iron in your hand right now,
and the living hand that holds it.

It is a bolt. It was always a bolt.
You know what a bolt is for.
Open it.