or the water meter-reader. More than a year of not going to church, a year of not mingling at the market or going to school. Days filled with exhaustion and ache for any kind of fellowship. But then the soul, shut away so long, also shrinks now at the merest wind, raw as the surface of a purling river. You're asked if you really love such solitude. But when they say love, they mean endure, outlast through grief after grief and terrible misgiving. How could you admit the whole sky again inside, the papery dust and pollen of flowering trees; a body to walk with on some scarlet and burnished evening that asks you to witness how the light never stopped dropping into its slot nor delivering itself again, maybe a little dented but still in one piece on the other side.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.