From What the Welsh and Chinese Have In Common

Distance

I have never been a good judge
of distance. The time it takes
to travel and the measures, miles
or meters, are animals
Adam never named.
They croak their unsettling
chorus, their metered demands
and I deny them the way passion
denies history, the way a wren
builds its nest against the wind,
in the same way I deny
your absence and the distance
I can never measure that sets
us apart. I would not be a martyr
at a distance, a new Adam
ready to call and control;
I would be willing to wander,
to say distance has its rule
and we have come under it.
In saying this, I see you are not
so distant, that what separates us
is not so large, as we imagine
where we could go and claim
that distance as our destination.

Paul_Jones@unc.edu

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