To my Partner on the Way to Mars
You recede to nothing.
The easy intertwining way we have
is stretched and broken
by this unnatural distance.
We must wait slow minutes for each
question and response, each disjointed
fragment of conversation.
And yet, my warm and living thoughts
still flow across the dark;
the emptiness plucked like a string,
singing notes of love,
which, rippling past your fragile craft,
stir the dancing patterns of your brain
to merge in fire which knows itself and sees the universe.
Like gravity which masters time and builds
the random fabric of the void
into vastnesses of worlds
and intricacies of insects’ wings,
so the love between us,
invisible, immutable, a binding force,
which shapes and makes us everything.