LONG DISTANCE ISN’T
Separated by a sea, two shores,
the clans of Vercingetorix, the Brenner
Pass, the boot of Italy
from just below the knee to halfway
down the calf, we nix them all
by phone.
Our voices kiss.
Who cares if the Atlantic bashes
Maine, Land’s End, or Normandy?
We leapfrog hemispheres the way
the mind cavorts through God-knows-what
millennia, what dynasties, what
samples of our kind from
Australopithecus to Charlie Chaplin.
The body’s place?
Cross latitude
by longitude, and it is there.
The body’s age?
Count up
from birth or back from death,
and it is there.
But words?
We launch them out like vows
against the wind.
Creating what we are,
they wing through seas and continents
and make us more than elegies
to yesterday.
Forget the cost.
Talk louder and ignore the static.
Pretend we’re walking through the dark.
Don’t stop.
Don’t stop or look
behind you.
As long as you
keep talking, I can find you.