Long Distance Love

The highway runs north to Washington.
I slide home, away from you, along its frozen concrete currents,
and I could nearly weep at the empty desert
against which the road is fused.

The sun rises as I drive and the cold light
makes the earth frail and brittle as
bleached bones.

But this same light upon you-oh soft miracle.
I know how the lifting of the morning shadows looks upon your still sleeping face,
How you have now begun to stretch across to my side of the bed.
And as I think of this a rusted warehouse appears,
its broken ceilings and sloping walls making it look as though
it were inhaling its final breath.
And from its ruined remains bursts a flock of birds
with all the force of a river, broke lose from a dam.

          CAROLINE GRAF