Passing

PASSING

you're in Hawaii
so I drove to your house
clicked off the headlights
rolled down the windows
and bathed in the dry oak and grass
winds that normally surround you

which made me think of Langston Hughes
and Zora Neale Hurston, how for decades
they missed each other, each too proud
or lost to find themselves back 
to the other's laughter and company

all that longing over language used

and I wonder if your life is so full
that one less relationship is relief
or if this same ragged cloth
beating my face and chest
wind-whips through the vacuum I've left

Thank you to the editors of Apollo’s Lyre for first publishing this poem.