"For D."
Listen to Rosanna Warren read this poem.
friendship is always travel. How to measure washing grit from beet greens, our palms magenta, water rollicks to a boil at the fireplace the fathers argue about the fire, the plane tears through the lowest cloud bank toward you in your new estate of illness, your suddenly acquired,
The plane whumps down through rainclouds, streaks
of creamy light through cumulus, and, below,
a ruffled scattering, a mattress' innards ripped—
the distance eye to eye, or hand to hand—as our hands age—
or shoulder to shoulder as we stand at the sink
our voices low, steady, exchanging
gossip and palaver while
in the large, old, dented pot and aromas sharpen
(thyme, onion, oregano), children's voices rise and fall,
and two families will eddy in rising hunger around the oval table
with its blue-checked cloth—
and again I am making my way toward you
from the far country of my provisional health,
costly, irradiated expertise.
You have outdistanced me.
Rosanna Warren's most recent book of poems isDeparture.
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