I’ve been distracted repeatedly before getting to do the response to this poem, because I wanted to post something slightly more intellegent than “that’s amazing!” Because amazing as it may be, that’s just such a tiny statement that invites the word why.

Words like “We will use laughter for kindling/and burn down the empty shells of other worlds” and these “lulled into a soft lust/by the singing of the sea” slip past tattered fragments of grey dust heavy cobweb to sear brilliant onto the fabric of night. This statement may also invite the word why. Oh well.

I am in awe of the easy sensuality and the play between the everyday and the sublime between this intense love afair and the house. It makes it seem like love could be touched not just in the ways we’d think of at first, but also in the sleek curve of a stainless steel countertop or the trembling brush of a butterfly’s wing – which when you live half the world away from your lovers is a welcome thought indeed.

I have lived half a world away from a lover, so I do understand precisely what you mean.

This one, however, is only half an hour away…. but he might as well live on another planet. Somehow, or other, at some times, we’ve managed to create a world that exists outside of any constraints of distance. I suppose I’ve written so much of him because it’s the only way I can hold on, keep a little part of that world for myself. I don’t want to forget and I don’t want to stop truly seeing him.

Words on a page. In this, I understand why you like to hear poetry, where I’ve always preferred to have it come to life in the silence of my mind. If I could hear this poem now, I guess that would breathe just a little bit more life into this memory… but only if he was the one reading it aloud to me

Anyway, I’m rambling, when all I’d intended to say is ‘thank you’

Well my dear, I have finally made it to the page and as usual and blown away and humbled to have read your words. You absolutely are the most talented writer I know.

Listening to Little Wing by Stevie Ray Vaughn and it seems apropos to your writing, in all of it’s sadness and beauty.

D.

That should be “am blown away”

Yes, being anal

Please, please, please, bring on the analness! I enjoy company in my neurosis!

I’m just sorry you travelled all of this way and I have nothing new to show you What can I say, my pen fodder isn’t being very co-operative these days. What’s the good of a muse if he doesn’t do anything amusing?