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      November 14, 2023Love of DistancePrartho Sereno

      He’s enchanted with the idea
      of reaching through space,
      wants me to wait by the window
      while he climbs the far-off mountain,
      sets up the light, flashes something back
      in Morse code. He says we should begin
      studying our dots and dashes, along with
      smoke signals, the extravagantly long rolled r’s
      of Spanish. Hand gestures of the deaf.
      Or we could take the rim trail,
      one of us staying on the southern lip
      while the other heads north till our bodies
      shrink to the size of tree-frogs. Then we can converse
      across the canyon without effort, no need
      to raise our voices. He is certain this will work,
      that the atmosphere at these heights
      will bear our words with a clarity
      as yet unknown to us.
      My faith in these things is weaker.
      I dare not tell him the Far Eastern stories—
      the one where the poet builds two houses
      on opposite shores of the lake. Gives one
      to his sweetheart, who he tells to go in,
      take up dulcimer or needlework, learn to love
      the lonely ways. Think of the surprise,
      he says. One of our faces suddenly shining
      between the black birds and reeds.

      from #27 - Summer 2007

      "Love of Distance" by Prartho Sereno

      “When I first read that so much depended on a red wheelbarrow beside the white chickens, I breathed a sigh of relief. My inner whisperer seemed to know this kind of thing, but I had always felt her murmurings to be of no use. Now I could scramble through an odd labyrinth of life-hoops—psychologist, cab driver, head cook, single parent, housecleaner, palmist, phys. ed teacher, Poet in the Schools—with someone I could trust inside. She’s the one who writes my poems.”

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