Waiting Today

Where, like frolicking children, the rivers run Where planets spin in loop lassooed by the sun Where the berries grow in bramble brush Where atoms born and atoms die in finite hush I searched for you before today, wait for you To hear the patent clicking of your shoe In the concrete corridor of my dream, to no avail My yearning, and constant bleating in the gale While the solemn clock ticks slowly to the hour While anxieties my expectations steadily devour While the maggot change to fly in fruit and flower And air churns the milk until it is old and sour I wait for you, flipping through the virtual rooms Of world, from page to page, your absence looms Like some frantic forboding of former grief again Like desert waits delirously for a dribble of rain. And so I understood I have an electronic shadow Of you, a virtual daily meet and greet, a hollow Grasp of reality, and yet this thing my world became We mantled in mirage of picture, mirage of name Against all phantom glory my love I sustain For it is no mirage this miserable nakedness of pain While I in the electronic gloom wait, and wait in vain For the fresh fantastic sound of falling rain. And you give me this, the internet, as my new place No door to knock, no mood of face, no real embrace No pebbles to throw at your window now, and tell You I am here, it's a mirage, but real the bytes' spell I am the insect thudding on the silk lines of the web I am the flotsom tossed about by the briny ebb I am the anomie without the warmth and touch of love I am the famished nest waiting for my wandering dove