We've never met.
Your absence is to me
More meaningful
Than presences of many.
I piece together
Fragments of your life
And verbal snapshots,
Lovingly pick up
The shells you scatter
Hoping to make out
The Ocean's solo
On your distant shore -
Your margin of the page
Where we both live.
The margins never merge.
The text is there
To keep apart
Yet also to connect.
The words between us
Ebb and flow, but they
Cannot dry out.
Wait. Some day I will
Walk on the waters
Landing at your door.
This poem has a echo of a famous Mahayana Buddhist sutra: Maha Prajna Paramita Hridaya Sutra which ends with a mantra: gate, gate, paragate...(gone, gone, all gone safely to the other shore) . Of course, the river does not free in India. So, I decided, in one of my poems, to let the river freeze. Then I will come to the shore to meet her across the frozen river. Have you thought of a frozen sea? I wonder. Ice is usually not associated with love, affection or passion. And that is where many poets fall into the trap of stolid conventionalism. This notion was even more fortified when I saw the painting of a great American painter of ralism: Adrian Deckbar. Every motion and emotion in her painting stops, and freezes. And, by this means, she synthesizes strangeness and familiarity, goes beyond the realm of the known and the unknown.. My musing as I read this poem.
Sand to so much sea to sand the in between, is yet the go between, eagle eyed across the thousands of miles, you can smile, knowing it's all one page I love the opening of absence and presence and it sure has a simple yet complex metaphor that fits so perfectly and beautifully...
Nice mesh of images, Julia. Good to read you again. With warmth, Gina.
Beautifully expressed. I think many of us on PH can relate to the theme of this poem with the close friendships we have made here with people that we have never met. I like the textual metaphor, too. Glad to see you back!
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
I love the idea that some day soon you will wash up at my door, and when you do, I shall have the samovar heating and ready, and we shall sit and have a lovely chat! Can't wait to see you in person, dearest friend!