The shadows on the wall, our close companions,
begin as light—a trespass through trees and glass
before transfiguring the carpeted hall:
in the painting of an open window, the curtains
blow forever toward a sea, unseen over hills,
far from our domestic urgency,
where the southern morning breaks in,
echoing on the surfaces, the sway of pine and sweet gum
—everything we shut out,
even now, with the wind-speckled lake and the reeds
ecstatic as holy rollers, even as the hospitals and morgues fill and fill,
I’m caught in my longing to be with you
somewhere else, lost in the surge of ten million
beating hearts beneath the tall towers,
uncountable strangers going about their lives,
their warmth separate from ours and not.
