your diffident presence haunts me. I can see you
clear as day, around the next corner, waiting;
across the grocery store, investigating the bread.
neat and purposeful, quiet and grave, a Water Rat,
you slip unobtrusively among the crowd, elusive,
quick, impatient. the shape and movement of you
are etched on my heart, I have looked for you
as fearfully as a child losing sight of its Mum
in a crowded store. and I have lost sight of you;
a thousand miles away you read, or work, or dream,
and do you think of me? I doubt it; but you
are with me always. all my neighbours are barbarians,
as the saying goes. how I miss your voice, your face,
your quietude, your grace.
-- GPL Sep 2005 D. A. Clarke