Insensible
       


       Insensible it was 
       to look you up,
       to find the flame of your name
       in the small local paper,
       a society of words, words, words,
       and your photo on that page;
       the happy refined living that has come,
       the easy world of polish and praise
       that moved toward you
       as you turned its way.

       I think of other things,
       but now and then, of you,
       especially in this December plane
       high, high, so implausibly high
       above the rise and fall of the 
       white parceled plain.
       Thirty thousand feet,
       the pilot interrupts, to say.
       Yet even from this height,
       all beneath is clear, articulate,
       as the woven linen of this page.

       So I think of you, as I did then,
       the way you moved through snow,
       or just above,
       your skis leaping to the 
       changing arc of your hips
       tracking the perfect curve 
       of a snow-dressed then.
       The white dust in the light
       swirled in your passing.
       A nimbus, now, without an angel.

       Through the small divide 
       of plexiglass,
       I lean into the winter wind,
       search the shimmering hills until 
       I find you 
       there,
       down there,
       out there, 
       some where in all the white;
       by time, by distance
       made small,
       infinitesimal, 
       but true as the last black spec
       that marks this page.




       Next
       Contents
       Home page