The ink is heavy on these early pages, A ledger drawn in shadows and in frost. We walked our separate trails through quiet ages, And tallied up the things the winter cost. You knew this northern dark long years before me, Before my own chaotic compass spun, But every frozen mile was reaching toward me, Until our separate histories were one. The Book of Erikah and Joe is written In something far more permanent than stone. It is the wild sanctuary, hidden, We carved out of the wilderness alone. It isn't just a record of survival, Of tragedies and histories we endured, It is the steady pulse of our arrival, A bond the heavy universe secured. We stand upon the summit of our making, And look across the valley of the years. There is a gentle sorrow in the waking, A quietness that borders on the tears. For every chapter closed is gone forever, The autumns we have spent cannot return, But time cannot untie or cleanly sever The fundamental, steady fire we burn. The days grow short, the permafrost gets colder, The fleeting world outside begins to fade, But every single day that we grow older, Is just another testament we made. Before us lay the decades, blank and waiting, Unwritten pages stretching in the snow. Whatever heavy transits are dictating, Whatever way the solar winds may blow. The outer planets shift their distant places, The wheel of karma turns its slow design, But looking in the firelight at our faces, I know your lunar gravity is mine. Let Pluto grind the outer world to gravel, Let Saturn bring its lessons to the door, Together there is nothing we can't travel, We have survived the bitterest before. Whatever cosmic weather comes to find us, Whatever strange eclipses hide the sun, The darkest of the shadows lie behind us, And yet the deepest story has begun. I know that we will ride it out together, Two sparks against the infinite and cold. Through every shifting age and winter weather, As long as we have memories to hold. We are the living breath of all we conquered, A brilliant, melancholic, blazing glow. Forever intertwined, forever anchored, Within the Book of Erikah and Joe.
