The Distances


Skin sister and brother, you and I
have closed our tiniest interstices
into this brilliant being before us.
Now at your breast she drinks
the love we have between us.

No cleaving, no shock, no jolt,
you are one the long minutes of day,
I with you the dark tossing hours -- 
a double tapestry worked feverishly, 
no time to see the whole, the part.

See her face? How round and smooth
her smile composes itself?
Now look here where the world
is carving its icy frieze
flashing probes inside my soul.

In the mornings an engine turning over,
her nascent wave held in your arms
the wide look avidly records 
the sunlit memory of departure
repeated a childhoods's infinity of days.