Upon Reading Mr. Hands... Poem by RIC BASTASA

i like the way your short hands
compose the poems that make my day.
Such poems are short like you and
your short hands and such shortness
call my attention, with a promise that
reading them would not really take
that long.

crisp and with all the tasts of what
is bitter and sweet and salt combined.
and i savor each, and i drench my
mind on each, and then i begin to
understand what is bland, and what
is missing.

there is a space between those words
which did not make me sleep the whole
night.

like a flicker, then a conflagration
of sleeplessness.