I am much taller in person
Than I am on your screen.

They say that the camera puts on ten pounds
But the images in my memory weigh a tonne.

A picture of you paints a thousand words
In a language I struggle to understand.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder
Unless you've left your heart behind.

Nothing from the world
Silence like a bell that rings
I make my own noise

Who is it that comes?
A crunch from the pathway heard
Icy frozen steps

Even in words
Rain in rivulets
To downspout deluge
Into permeable ground

Even as gestures
Sleet blown horizontal
Skiffs of snow on asphalt
Frozen edges on puddles

Even as texture
Abrasive granules of desert sand
In berms of dun, and fallow, and sepia
Soft and warm in the sun.

All of it a tapestry
Much expected is still unwoven
And lies in coils at our feet
Parts of it have come undone
Some of the colours and shapes are mixed up
But it hangs on the wall
And we keep on collectively weaving in spite of it all

She is a flower
Rendered in black and white
I am a poem
Encoded in stuttered Morse

Tendrils white and yearning
Spawned from the base of the stem
Cut and immersed in water
They reach and absorb
Flooding their capillaries
A pipeline of moisture and mineral
To the chlorophyll factory upstairs.