I sit at the table and across the distance, what measure should I invent to measure such distances?, is the chair angled to one side, left as you last sat in it, restoring to me your presence that I can only imagine and not sense, not sense but invoke, like an ancient sound

or an ancient memory: first of summer, because this is winter, of a koel singing at my window in a far away landscape and as my feet turn cold: another, of winter, fog rising from an exhaling earth that window becoming opaque and the koel's song being left to be remembered in wisps of smoke rising from blown candles and blown memories.

And in between these two memories, I am in a room of white curtains, I am standing behind them looking into where you sit, a single tress frames your angular face as it swings and sways a swing suspened from a pepul tree, the river flows, sound of breaking waves, and I am being risen towards a sky of blue, closer and closer but never reaching as the Laws, like gravity, that apply in exact measure, divide me between memories, divide memories between countries and divide countries within me, I am in one country, my memory in another and you have already left for another: across that distance, I can call but can't measure,(what measure should I use and what measure should I invent?)

And just as you place that tress back behind you ear, years will place back these moments of a recalled day's clarity into chambers of memory. I get up and straighten this angled chair which still remembers you, if only by how it is across the distance, across the table where we sat.

2002:12:22 23:30 Atlanta For Su