When I
see you in the grocery store
or on
the city bus, or drinking coffee after church,
and
when I greet you, there is a tiredness in my eyes
that
your face reflects back to me.
I ask,
How are you? and you say you are good,
are
doing well, but beneath the words
is a
whisper. It is my whisper
asking
Are you as lonely as the leaden autumn sky?
Under
the skin of our finely combed hair,
our
brushed teeth, is the question of How far apart
are
the bare branch at the shore and the warmth of spring?
Your
winter knows my name, frozen on its sheathed tongue.
The
cold doesn’t come from you
but
from that great distance which even now
stretches
between the beggar Lazarus
and
the desert of sorrow.
What
keeps me from knowing you
is as
much my own doubting call
into
silence…
as it
is the muffled echo as you shift
the
coffee from left hand to right
and
take a distracted sip.
Labels: community, poetry