Far Away

They say you are from far away
yet to me you seemed,
all along, so close
Even then, when I knew
only the exquisite flutter of each
of your minuscule fingers,
I imagined their lines and demarcations,
their intricate topography
as the map of a familiar country

Even then, when I pictured you
in those blurred fragments
they were glimpses
of an alien landscape

you were someone else
not in my image

Even now, as I hold you
and whisper
you are mine, you are mine
I think of that distant world
they say you come from
they say you belong to
 
I can only hope to meet you halfway

carry me with you
I am yours, I am yours

Listen

Sometimes in the cold wind there is a voice
stronger than a whisper but still, somehow, less palpable
than all the breathless noise
that echoes in the dark room
in the endless hours
between conversations.
Sometimes in the still night there is a sound
that makes us all seem less solitary
(if we listen)
not a word;
just, the tail-end of a dream
too close to forget
and too far away to touch

Talk

Talk about the moon, the little
lights you thought were stars until,
one by one, they disappeared
like forlorn candles. Talk about
politics, religion, other things
you are unsure of, books with middle parts
forgotten, cousins you have not heard from
since the wedding, since the funeral,
since a Thanksgiving so long ago
you can't remember who was there.
Talk, they say, even if you have nothing
to talk about, because she is watching,
in awe of everything
because she is there, waiting
to listen

Vast

Sometimes I come across a word I don't know:
storge, or galingale, or legerdemain
It isn't so surprising,
that in all the hundreds of thousands of words
I should encounter, from time to time,
the unfamiliar. 
More, that in the vast night
over the dark waves
we hear the flapping of a white sail
the timbre of a human voice
and find, always, somehow,
something to talk about