All that is left of this morning’s downpour, Are little specks of water congealed on These tall window panes that overlook Taller trees, now pulsing and dark green.

Then what makes you, O heart, turn Insistently to this past dry winter Where the only echoes in your chambers Were of bare branches and meager leavings

Of her passages, back and forth, in and out of your tunnel of sight, sheaves of her hair strung out like that season’s dark and her galleon like body yawing in the cold?

You don’t answer me. Thus the reason for your hankering after this remembrance remains as obscure As the weatherman’s prediction of rain this afternoon Or the opening and closing of a swallowtail butterfly’s wings!

The violin begs, how it begs, the god. It’s an old raga now, one I have memorized. I find myself humming it at odd times: Running sprints up the hills, arms pumping air, not unlike a violinist teasing wood.

The other day I was trying to explain Something about something, maybe love, To a girl, when this raga came up and stole My tongue. I kept chasing it in circles Like a dog chasing its tail. It was fun.

She even laughed, I haven’t seen her laugh Much before. So I became even funnier But I bet the god didn’t think so. Why the very next day, he cut my tail and Made me whimper in pain all night.

I then joined the violin in its begging.

Time is distance, but forgetting is closer at hand. Stick words to your windows, obscure the view, that is already vanishing behind you.

Take that snow, see how it falls over another year, of time and of distance. That is a poem too, hard and cold to the hand. Frostbitten words nip at you even as they stem the larger pain, don't they?

Bear that as delicately as you have borne love. Be a squirrel, warm the words with your body. Eat those kernels as food on these bleak days and hold a few as seed for next spring.

...

Then distant in time, for time is distance, you can unpeel these wind gnawed and water blurred words and sow them with your flowers or feed them to the swans.

Just write!