camping

You speak of things that I
can hardly put together in
the contours of my mind
as we build a camp in this
fertile delta formed from our
disparate consciousnesses
that needs must be but streams
pouring out into one sea.
We will get there. I know.

Meanwhile, tell me, where do you
find images of pianos and silences
cohabiting as if meant to be?

How are monsoonal mangoes
your friends on lonely evenings
covered in blankets of snow?

Who whips up dreams in the
middle of scorching afternoons
of back breaking work, ours not
the world of siestas.

Why can I not reach you except
in your words and even then
only through the prisms of
my paltry understanding?

What chasms lie between the
many yous, invisible in your own
stories, peeping through curtains
of deliciously desolate pasts, squatting
in narrow alleys of squalid presents,
wincing at impossible futures where
you lose your balance, and fall into
my pedestrian imagination for an
unlikely fairy tale.

I wonder. in the uncertain refuge of
this camp.where much is displaced.
But for now. Let it be,
your words and me.