Loss Poem #93

This poem was in the South African lit journal New Contrast in 2008, vol 141: 32-33.

Loss poem #93

I walk the streets of this African town

with women carrying boxes of oranges on their heads

and the road a mad chaos of slow strollers

oblivious of two ton tins captained by crazed pirates.

Every day, this is my walk to the post office

to open yet another empty box.

The day has been fine so far but now,

now the weight returns

like another bloody cold front coming on from Cape Town

and I miss you and see you walking the streets of that American town

so far from here, so far.

I don’t know why this agony returns every day as the clock strikes one

or why it’s so difficult to reunite with you

but more than miles separate us, and its

not so much the ocean but the obstacles

not so much the continents but the constraints

and as I walk through this African town

on a sunny summer’s day with dozens of bright bandanas

blazing like flowers in a meadow

I feel like a fly trapped in a web

and my heart sinks like some stone

into the muck of some polluted pool.

What is this spider that has captured me

and bound me in its threads?

The spider is called paradox and the prime rate

and woven into this web of loss,

I don’t stand a fucking chance.