The Light in the Dark

The night sky clears with coolness of the air

As I hear footsteps on the sidewalk passing

Below my balcony.  A query of where,

That solemn sound through white sounds of solemn night,

A soothing noise, could this stroller be going

Arises in the mind, a distant light

Triangulating ears, a way of knowing:

Uncertain knowledge, fractiously imparted

Through the ears to the mind, where all this started.

Salubrious night, draw the shades and keep

These intricate suggestions till I sleep.

It could be there are answers of import

From alien evidence, meanings revised

When reviewed soberly by day, but now

Only half-known night thoughts emerge from shades

Peripherally, a far-off car alarm,

A barking dog, a tooting horn.  For whom

Are those a message? They intrude without

Connection, and from somewhere meaning comes,

Not random, intricately sensible,

From a collection of details compiled

Of intimate experiences so close

Even an absent lover's whisper is distant

Against it, this intrinsic faculty.

We miss what is not there but also make

From myriad memories, attenuated

By time and something more, a phantom world

Imbued with shades we know, inspired of wind

And sound, and stars, the diamonds of the mind,

Even as smoke rings stratify themselves

In this night's air, like avatars of clouds

Expelled of a lesser heaven against this sky,

Measured acutest at its vanishing.

Sudden Returns

            for Mihai

Places we have been

Stay with us

And the people we meet

Stay with us.

In conversations we have

Later, we hear their voices

Again; we see in other faces

Those faces we knew

In other places, and we

Are reminded of where

We met and talked and laughed.

When you live with people

And love them, they

Stay with you,

And when you love people

Any place, those places

Stay with you.

One day, perhaps tomorrow, or
Maybe next week or
Next year

You will walk down a tree-lined street

In a city past

A cafe, and a cup

Clinks against a saucer, and

A wind moves

The leaves of the trees: You

Recall a bright stretch of empty beach,

Her face framed by wisps of sunlit hair,

Her voice laughing through the breeze,

Applause of waves on the sand,

The sound of the ocean,

Again and again, again.

                                                                   KLK

                                                                   2/7/05