The sea is still today
It's cerulean blue and gold
I think of the thoughts it carries
Within its hidden folds.
Its touch is soft and gentle
It soothes the ache of years
But I wonder how many waves
Are made from fallen tears.

the weight of a hand
resting in yours
the resistance to the touch of a single finger
upon another
the sizzle of a thousand hairs between fingertips
the dampness of breath upon your cheek
the redness of pair of lips
...or of a blushing forehead
...or of cheekbones under droplets of perspiration

the silence of an empty room
the sense of someone close
...who is a thousand miles away
...and thinking of you

We had a language you and I.
Not of lips or hips or trembles.
but of words, and thoughts
and the tangles between ideas and emotions.

And now that you are gone the words I once spoke you
try to push through my lips, my body convulses
to speak again that tongue we taught each other.
that language we shared.

Sometimes when I speak with others I hear echoes of it
and I try to form complex sentences that belonged
to our language.

But they are not of our kind,
no one is of as much my kind sometimes I feel,
as you were of mine.

And so now I sit a tourist in the world,
and sometimes at night I remember
that once I had a home-country with you
and a tongue.

at first when you take off
the world just looks small

a dollhouse, a miniature world
an amusing punchline to an old joke
a fantasy tinged with g-force and sprite in clear cups

but as the sky darkens and the plane lifts higher

the world seems to drown in blackness
an inky clarity of night not confused by clouds
and suddenly it is as if you are at the top on an ocean
looking at a far away ocean floor
crawling with foreign creatures with all of their bones lit up
over coral reefs of light and movement
parking lots like stationary jelly fish and highways like currents
of neon veins pumping lights and cars

all of the world's exoskeleton is illuminated
and it is beautiful and movable  
it is nature's patterns played out in electricity

but the farther out you go
the more the sharpness and geometry of the roads and cities
attack the eye

and the coral reefs turn to computer motherboards
all of man's ingenuity and beauty no longer draping the world
but ordering it

into squares and jagged lines
into distant pixel pinpricks
into maps

until you're not traveling through the world
but over it

Hot Coffee at the Tracks.
clickety-clack,
steam from the cups and pots,
steam from the stacks,
this whistle-stop with a cup of "Joe,"
on the way home with yet many miles to go...

____

See the painting that inspired the poem:

"Homeward Bound" by David Tutwiler
http://www.myhdwallpapers.net/wallpapers/Train-station-painting-original.jpg