The Distances (For Terence George Craddock) Poem by Stephen Bennett The Playjurist

At first he resisted, then thought of great ones
and the unusual times they choose
to show up. Cooleridge
for instance, in his writing of Kubla Khan
halted by the door knock,
and nearly lost the whole thing..
and I think he could feel it and thought
just like that one, this one
could also be stopped,
abridged or postponed by the always coming
of a much better thought. I wanted to tell you...

I mean he wanted to tell a friend
he suspected more
than he knew, about a girl he used
to dream of, and would at the same time
listen and speak his mind to,
how he and she used to wondered about
the so so amazing distances.

"What if the greatest words ever written
were written somewhere near by? "
she once asked. The greatest
ball player we liked to think plays
on the team in another town. But could
the greatest guitar be played by just someone
around here? Sometimes everyone wonders,

"Could the center of the universe
possibly be this very place? "
Could the farthest end of the cosmos
be now touching the skin on my face? My Becky
always sleeps close by. But it's Terence of Westport,
New Zealand, who has read what I write.

I think that the infinity of the distances
is just in our heads. How big... how incredibly big
is this whole thing that we see. I believe everything
and everyone everywhere is literally all here tonight.