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today joseph and i talk about what we think about love, in general terms.

we touch on the best ways to find happiness in life, skim by related poetry,

and avoid any use of the past tense, as you do, when

you haven't spoken in two months because one of you was in a five week, silent

meditation, and the other one claims to have trouble communicating when fog is in

the way. i have always found fog to be a very real barrier to the world

beyond it.

we speak by phone--him, in Boston, near a pink bicycle that doesn't change gears, me, in a field, near tall swaying grasses by a tide that moves in all around me.

i panic, him speaking, as i realize the speed of the rising water, and look across it towards

the bushes of wild berries

(blue, huckle, salmon). joseph talks about the

ethics of enduring the mess of love if a lover is ill. does

true personal happiness require sacrifice for another?

or something in that family of conversations. a bald

eagle ten feet away waves undulating wings across the top of

the tall swaying grasses

and crosses into the woods, wrapping orange claws around

the gnarled branch of an old spruce

stump.

i run along the edge of the advancing water,

the phone to my ear, as I chase it before jumping to the other side.

i run up the bank and sit next to a berry bush,

pleased with myself, with my dry feet. i listen and wonder what to say

to joseph, who does not want to know what i have done today

(or any day.

ideas, not information, bring us closer, reveal where we are).

i lie my head below the bush and collect

blueberries onto my sternum, making

listening sounds, catching the falling berries by squeezing my arm against

my ribs.

the sunshine splits

on my eyelashes until i can only see

distracted rays of light, and a green brown bush with no more berries.

i remember late nights, past tense, early may, memorizing poetry in

joseph's bed until the birds then the cars became loud out his window,

louder than the words we repeated over and over until they started

sticking, hoping it meant they were sinking in where they

couldn't escape,

willing the ideas to stick us together, too,

closer together than this phone call, 

with its broken pink bicycles

and rising high tide, with its

distance and its desire for something, 

something  

like an absence, something like an

i missed you, today, love, won't you 
just tell me something you've done?

dls