I know I'm missing the sun
       Because all I can see
     Are the inside of these familiar windows
  No less alive
But much less bright

I opened the well-worn pages -  
The scent of a thousand years
Crinkling in the folds
That my nervous fingers
Turned,
Chapter after
Chapter –
It read like a river,
Streaming from the consciousness
Of hearts that knew
what it meant to smile –
but I was naïve,
a watcher from a window -
I read and envisioned
but did not understand
what others had so long away discovered
so frighteningly easily

I am the lone wind
A moment's song, I kiss your
Skin then I'm gone.

After you left
it was quiet.

I turned off the
air conditioning
to keep your breaths around,

made tea to smell you,

found the poems
I was reading
too dull for words,

saw you
in oak stains
in bedposts
the rest of the day.