Out of the Dark

1

In the hours of darkness, in the long
Emptiness of night, I see you most:
Then your being rests next to me,
Unencumbered by bodily weight,
In absolute, transparent visibility.

I hear you talk. I hear, feel, the things
You say and dwell on them, listening,
Learning, with no desire to add
Or interject. And it’s effortless,
The concentration I have on you.

I know you love me. It’s what you said,
And often too, when we were full
In other form. I heard it then, but
Know it now with voiceless clarity,
All intervening matter being gone.

So you are here in this – my vacant dark –
A presence never as whole as you
Have been, yet more complete, nothing
Diminished but the inessential, for
It’s true: where nothing is, love remains.

2

You talked to me in a dream last night,
And stood as you used to do, and
Smiled, all without complication
Of my seeing, thinking, of body, selves,
As once before, and nothing new.

I knew it was you immediately, as if
Every change were known already,
And you could be as sensibly composed
Out of time as within it, in some purity
Beyond all reality or my imagining.

You talked to me, and the words you used
Were not words, but every word was true,
As they were when I was alive for you,
And you for me, as if that too were
A state of being that we could choose.

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