For You, Etta Poem by STANLEY PACION

How the couch swells, then sinks,
As if its cushions meaningfully form to bring your body
Still closer to mine.

Twelve years float through our conversation.
Stray notes air from the web radio,
Now and then punctuating our sentences.

Why ask about our history?
What vanity possesses you to make sense of the world,
And try to figure God's will?

We met, we loved, what time before,
Is it dejavu, do we relive a previous encounter?

And that place where I first saw you,
Do we return to it,
And gain another chance to do life over?

Or have we hope to live hereafter?
Shall we be rejoined,
And hand-in-hand walk the night
Forever young and through those fields
On the other side of the river?

The streaming-music stops.

You lie before me and seem no more tangible
Than a thought, a dream within a dream,
Emerging within an instant then vanishing without a trace.
I just hold on, and try to grasp you.

I hear the whisper of your breath, its sound,
Though all the other voices cease, your voice remains.