After awhile and at last, hello,
the phone jittering across the desk
and appropriately just ahead of my grasping hand.
Just and only hello, really,
and everything else mere
implication and inference
filling the space between.
A lot of space,
so much that I wonder
if my narrative, starved by exile
has taken
to writing itself, all a conceit
borne on delirious dreams,
the day at the lake,
the long dinners in the
old stone house in Paris,
the drive down a cinder road
to the glass house in the forest
a desperate defense against
the randomness of now,
what I would hold fast,
stubborn and lingering
as the last pinprick of light
burning the night
like an old picture tube,
the troubled sleep just
age and indigestion
and this,
after a fleeting recollection,
a curious inquiry, just hello.