Between Florida and the Cascades, Eli

[bi_janus]

Between Florida and the Cascades, Eli

Bi_janus

How does a man

compete with a place?

What’s the calculus

of the hurricane

and the volcano?

Brief reunions,

twice a year,

would haul us

across the rasp

endlessly, keeping

the wounds weeping

red wolf tears

until our wolves shriveled.

Intimates reduced

to acquaintance, what

would our talks encompass—

the river of longing

between the hearts,

worse, our work,

a holiday mimeograph?

Eli, you saved me

for Ann, and I

you for Justine.

We kept the cake,

eating it, too,

sating the wolf’s hunger.

Are we longtime companions,

whispered to the world now

in encrypted obituary code?

Vivimos dia por dia.

Email is no touch,

yet I look

for yours every day,

and, as to touch,

none is more

than less.

We would not bear

thirty more goodbyes,

thirty more last times.

[DesDownunder]

Nice poem, made me nostalgic for the moment I discovered "people are more important than places."

But then you extended that discovery to an exchange of gifts that touches friendship when it is loving, forever day by day.

[Merkin]

The geography is such an apt metaphor for the distance one inevitably travels from once-upon-a-time. I particularly liked

We kept the cake,

eating it, too,

sating the wolf’s hunger.

Lovely bittersweet poem.

James