Missing You: 1,440

 

Missing You: 1,440

There are as many letters in this poem

As there are minutes in a single day,

And sixty seconds crawl through every minute-

I count them one by one while you’re away.

I count them one by one while you’re away,

Numbering the tedious hours as they creep on,

Waiting for email, phone-calls, anything

Might serve to comfort me while you are gone.

What serves to comfort me while you are gone?

You disembodied, voicing hopes and fears.

Meanwhile the leaden days drag slowly by

As weeks turn into months and months to years.

So weeks turn into months and months to years,

Years mutate to centuries, eons pass,

Yet time stands still and so it seems do I

Stand frozen as within a looking-glass

Frozen within the looking-glass of time

A handless clock whose numbers are erased,

Sleepless I lie in bed and long for dawn

Counting the minutes in their dull parade.

I count the minutes in their dull parade,

Numbering the beatings of my troubled heart,

These integers, zero to aleph-null,

Are neural barriers keeping us apart

The neural barriers keeping us apart

Are seconds, minutes, hours, days and weeks,

Millennia from now we meet again

Each half remembering what the other seeks.

The other half-remembering what it seeks,

Unrecognised and yet possessed by love

That spans far memory like an arching bridge

‘All breathing human passion far above.’

All human passion breathed within this bed

Where I lie restless waiting for the dawn,

As far from kissing as that static love

That Keats once glimpsed upon a Grecian urn.

What Keats once glimpsed upon a Grecian urn

Was the negation of arithmetic

The endless counting , actuarial,

And so another endless day creeps on,

Creeps on and on until- like you - it’s gone,

Then on and on again and on and on….

There are as many letters in this poem…

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM