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Those that from a long way off look like flies
like the cold leaving me
how small
the sight of ships
Poems on the topic: distance
Poems on the topic “distance” on Poets.by.
Cowboy haiku
noon field—
I find nobody
and a horse
after foolish talk
the discourse
of rain
I keep
a great distance
in my truck
Longing
all morning in books
and other places
a far face
Pandemic Time
Kept apart by the pandemic — my wife in London, me in the mountains of Pennsylvania — we connect each day through video conferencing software. She tells me of a scary incident earlier in the day when a man spat at her, narrowly missing her face, as they passed on bicycles. She watched in astonishment as he went on spitting: at a bystander and then at a runner, fortunately also missing both, before he disappeared around the corner like a figure out of some urban legend — “the mad plague carrier.”
pandemic time
stopping the car to watch
a pair of ducks
Net Work
It is still light where I sit
reading the lines you are touch-
typing in the dark.
The planet’s curves
are always coming between us
her ceaseless spinning
her magnetic field
her core of molten rock.
But it’s the state that says stop
behind arbitrary lines
the border force that says stand still
for security screening
and if you’re poor, stay out.
The earth is always knitting
us together. Her forces
are centripetal and convergent.
Reach
After a hundred years of reaching
for the same, small portion
of filtered sunlight,
these three witch hazel trunks
have begun to merge. The ground bulges
over their common roots.
Back home, you stretch
a measuring tape from hand to hand
along your outstretched arms.
On Hold
Held remotely
says the message on your screen
when I interrupt our call to take another.
Talking or holding: you can’t do both,
even in a world whose far reaches
no longer exceed our grasp.
On the other side of the ocean, I read Resume.
When we do, you tell me laughing
you almost miss being held.
Five hours apart, yet we share a single present,
speaking, listening, from one infinitesimal
moment to the next: we hold.
Asterisk
To be small is to be distant
& vice versa.
The asterisk calls.
It leaves a message.
You turn it all the way up:
it sounds like a small fan.
In some parallel universe
all the stars look like this
& books with too many footnotes
collapse into black holes.
Correspondence
How did they do it, those long-
distance lovers of old, waiting
months for a letter to make
its way by sea?
And when it did, oh the slow
parsing of its every word!
Onion-skin paper
like a bed of salt.
Cursive writing
like Jonah’s gourd vine,
the work of a single night.
Love is always present
My eyes could not see it
My ears could not hear it
My fingers could not touch it
But I knew it was there
The same way you know the sun will rise again
The way winter will melt into spring
The way the wave will always beat on the sand
Because even if something is not evident
It is still there
Lurking in the shadows
Of pride
Of ego
Of distance
But all of these things can be overcome
If you allow it
For even though
Ten
I lay beside her, feeling miles apart from her lips.
How long
How strong,
Can you be.
Ever protecting,
Guarding me.
How high,
Can you stand.
When I'm holding,
Your hand.
How far,
Can you see.
When I pull you,
To your knees.
How much,
Can you take.
When I crack you,
Make you break.
Describe a feeling — we’ll find a poem
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