for c.s.
My morning is your evening:
I think, I worry—as your day’s cares float away.
My evening is your morning,
My dreams, your day.
When morning light blinds me
And Boston trains noisily run,
Your Calcutta sky dissolves
And whispers, There. That’s done.
You live near the warm earth’s middle;
I, near the top, on the other side, and far away.
Electric storms connect us,
The internet’s continual day.
Electric telephone,
Busy luminosity—
The world buzzes.
Am I busy, or lazy?
Let the hurricanes come
And push the warm air here
As winter darkens the crowds
Of this cold holiday year.
We celebrate in costumes
And jackets and candles and snow.
You put away your sari
And miss things which I don’t know.
The earth lies between us;
All we have is mind
Sniffing electric evidence:
Are you good? Am I kind?
My poem laughs—it has always been this way.
Always distance; always night chasing the day.
Always this! always this!
What is far, close; and the close, far away.
