A very dear, very old friend of mine is on my mind a lot this week. He is going through some difficulties and it makes me realize how important basic communication is. So many people I know do not connect with others. I do not know how they do it. People are important.

This next poem is for my wonderful, brilliant and unique friend. He knows how much I love him.

Do your friends know you love them?

Friend

01/02/2009

Dubai

You knew me before i was this woman

poet scrounging for words

elusive

witnessing together the triumph

of that journey we took to

become us, in the making, ever and

again, unmade and replaced by

a newer carcass

lost to our youth, how your smile still dazzles

me and sends me letters in silence

across distance we

never paid attention to,

you knew me awkward and afraid

attuned to the tacit agreements we

signed to love beyond the

geography of convenience

beyond the shape of the atlas

beneath the earth that separates, to dwell in the

quickened internal rhapsody

of your fleeting poems, a prayer, an amulet to protect our laughter

burying the days of despair we count over and over

brutal score keepers noting each other’s failure

fingers unclenched to protect you

from yourself

i am bare,

that hideous form i cower from dispelled in the mirror

of your hands, for

to you, i am no shape

i am no matter

but a collection of stars free in your night

a simple sun ray beaming through a window of time

stretching to where you stand solid

that lights the horizon of memory

from here

to there, to you. And now i am tempted to cup my hand

across your face, to lean in and touch

the absence of distance, to mold

my thoughts after the

pattern of our speech, frazzled,

connected through stutter and the singular way

there is no other like you,

none ever. You keep my past safe in renewed breath,

i forage the world to dream close to you

willing this life to break

gently

a tumbleweed of love fragile

to be swept up

in the free wind

together