From the notebooks of Anne Verveine.(Poem)

 
FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF ANNE VERVEINE 
 
   VI 
 
   You are dead, therefore I write to you. 
   I am dead, therefore I write to you. 
   Did we ever kiss? The shadow airplane 
 
   swooped down to smack the tarmac silently. 
   That crash didn't crash. The kiss 
   did but dissipated 
 
   in air like phantom smoke 
   rising from my shadow chimney inching 
   its way all afternoon across 
 
   the neighbors' slanted roof--heat 
   gusts escaping up the flue and 
   printing themselves 
   as visible ghosts trailing 
 
   off to a chilly Empyrean. 
   February gleams on the roof slates. 
   As if the tire were real. As if 
 
   the heart pumped real blood. 
 
   VII 
 
   Distance was the house in which I welcomed you. 
   But it was in the river 
   that we became cadence, there where the current braided 
 
   together again, after the stone bridge ...