on this day I would love to be near you 

but you are far away 	


 in the moment I feel this fact 

unnumbered seconds stampede across a vast landscape

thunder into distance until I am  

left

	alive 		alone 	


while our world --

its fragile shell cracking

hatches danger

that will not be persuaded 

by whiffs of magic 

appeasement or prayer

to pass us by

				

all this time dear friend

on your side of the world 

you breast threats

stir hives  

expose the details of fear 

and its results

love doggedly / cheerfully



being apart 

what is left to us in these precarious times

is remembering 

our wholesome comfort

our domesticity  



no matter / I determine 



to fascinate empty places by watching them suffer recent loss 



to squint at solids standing in my way transforming them to scintillates



to show my eyelids the sun --see memory projected on the blood red screen

	  

dear one so far away --
 do you think 


changing how we see 


might make what we see 


contradict the fact of 
separation 


so that 	whatever threatens

and wherever we may be          

you might inhabit a timeless place with me?

poem and photograph  by Jo Mariner