When I think of you,
I imagine distance: the long brown
dry land where even a shout
is not heard, and though I wish
for you to hear my shout,
for we are connected blood-to-blood,
the silence remains, even in a call
to you, even in a conversation
about something that’s nothing,
even in all that we share and
once shared so much.

Across this brown land, I know you
are there on the shimmering horizon,
in the distance, and perhaps you
are calling back to me and I do
not hear for I am not expecting
sound, just the silence of loss
and the deafness of lost expectation.

You call sometimes, and we talk
politics, and your passion for what
matters closes the distance just a little,
but no more, no more than this,
nothing more than what you want to give,
as the call ends and the sound fades
and the brown land between us has
only the sound of purposeless wind
and the swirl of lifeless dust,
as I wait for your sound.

 

24/8/2024