for Terry
It’s raining now to show that nothing is alone As wet eyes ease the continent heart A distance so contained and so contented Keeping nothing apart from the love of brothers And while I write to you I hear its simmering art While boiling water for coffee to keep me awake Everything smells the same as the sea at my door Calling me like the waves of cars on the freeway Minding the season sound soothing the pacific silence With distance conjoining the distant atlantic Where you pass the winter I begin to see at last We wait for everything to come together As this rain that summer had drained away Is falling again like the springs that begat the past And brings our feelings closer while knowing in the time to come Although we are far away we have a way to go
19 September 1973