For Pam: A Benediction of the Air

In every presence there is absence.

When we’re together, the spaces between

Threaten to enclose our bodies

And isolate our spirits.

The mirror reflects what we are not,

And we wonder if our mate

Suspects a fatal misreading

Of our original text,

Not to mention the dreaded subtext.

Reality, we fear, mocks appearance.

Or is trapped in a hall of mirrors

Where infinite regress prevents

A grateful egress. That is,

We can never know the meaning

Of being two-in-one,

Or if we are one-in-two.

What-I-Am is grieved at What-I’m-Not.

What-We-Should-Be is numbed by What-We-Are.

Yes, I’m playing word games

With the idea of marriage,

Musing over how even we can

Secularize Holy wedlock.

Or to figure it another way,

To wonder why two televisions

In the same house seem natural symbols

Of the family in decline.

Yet you are present to me now.

I sense you keenly, at work,

Bending red in face to reach

A last defiant spot of yellow

On those horrific kitchen cabinets.

Your honey hair flecked with paint;

Your large soft hidden breasts

Pushing down against your shirt.

The hemispheres of those buttocks

Curving into uncompromising hips.

To embrace you would be to take hold

Of my life in all its substance.

Without romance, I say that if

I were to deconstruct myself

And fling the pieces at random,

They would compose themselves

Into your shape.

But I guess that is romantic,

The old mystification-

Cramming two bodies

Into a single space.

Amen!

Our separation has taught me

That, dwelling in mind,

The corporeality

Of mates has spiritual mass

Which may be formulated:

Memory times desire over distance

Yields a bodying forth.

Thus I project into the

Deadly space between us

A corposant,Pulsating a language

That will cleave to you

In the coolness of sleep

With insubstantiality

So fierce as to leave its dampness

On the morning sheets,

Or so gentle

As to fan your brow

While you paint the kitchen.

A body like a breath,

Whispering the axiom

By which all religions are blessed:

In every absence there is presence.

Bene

Bene

Benedictus.