We meet in a place where
words and pictures begin to occupy
some apartment
or maybe a dance hall
park bench
or chair in the back of an auditorium
in the back of the mind
sometimes i lay a kiss on your cheek
but you don't feel it
sometimes you dance with me
in abandoned circles to music
I don't hear it
there's a room of desire with a locked door
a succession of past lives
marching around the periphery of the colonnade
dancing around your landscape
near the sea and palms and brown women
shaking my landscape of mountains and sky and pink children
what could make these landscapes collide
and quake open that locked door?
a car a train a plane
a thumb held up to the wind
But time is not of the essence
The essence is this time