Letters From Exile—ii Poem by Hemant Mohapatra

It wasn't just the snow
eating up the suburban baroque,
or that you had just walked in,
cold as a welldigger's heart.
It wasn't the twilight leaving us
with our loneliness, or the night
unfreezing fireflies. It wasn't you,
with your elbows shored up
on old sienna tables, nor me,
keeling my way to the moon.
It wasn't the television
drooling relentless channels.
It was us: we were never geared
for love. The regularity was too dull.
Imagine the earth in orbit,
and this giant circumference
of light slowly slipping west:
everyone on that edge, waking
up together, lovers, still in bed,
entering each other and leaving
in fierce automobiles. It was
that routine we couldn't live.
We were like a dog
in love with his bone.
You throw it to the far end
of the field and he races off,
not to recover the piece,
but just to clear
the distance in between.