Please, Be Gentle

I do not know you, yet I feel you gone

I sense your absence

Like a closet hanger

stripped of the garments

that kept it warm.

Those cotton curves now filled

by something else.

Shoulder, hip, knock-knees.

Or maybe a heap on the floor

Billows from the vent

next to the closet door.

I feel you gone.

I sense your absence

Like a castaway

Waking from the dream

of a ship that came for rescue

a prop plane that saw

the flare gun.

But there are no flares to be found

No dry wood for smoke signals

No books, no music

no sympathy.

Just miles and miles of coastline

and unbreakable palm trees.

I feel you gone

I sense your absence

like a mouth looking for words

in another language.

Intonations it cannot comprehend.

Shapes and meanings

it cannot imagine

because it has not studied this tongue.

No pictures, no context clues.

Stories it longs to tell,

but can't.

I feel you gone.

I sense your absence

like the frame of film

Misses the image

it has yet to capture.

A celluloid square

thus far unexposed

with a thin emulsion

Wanting only for light and shadow.

A thousand words painted

by a second in the sun.

An open shutter

and a window to the world.

I sense your absence

the space you have yet to fill.

I feel you not yet arrived.

(Winter/Spring 2009)