how close? how wide?

I am back. It is 2008. And perhaps the most amazing thing of all? (Beside the fact that I survived 2007 at all.)

(What you are supposed to be seeing is that there are two laptops, side by side,
connected to a big beautiful blue cord that is the internet. And we are at home.)

We just got hooked-up today about 15 minutes ago. We are giddy with this miracle, about a year in the making. I feel so happy!

If You Knew

What if you knew you'd be the last
to touch someone?
If you were taking tickets, for example,
at the theater, tearing them,
giving back the ragged stubs,
you might take care to touch that palm,
brush your fingertips
along the life line's crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase
too slowly through the airport, when
the car in front of me doesn't signal,
when the clerk at the pharmacy
won't say Thank you, I don't remember
they're going to die.

A friend told me she'd been with her aunt.
They'd just had lunch and the waiter,
a young gay man with plum black eyes,
joked as he served the coffee, kissed
her aunt's powdered cheek when they left.
Then they walked a half a block and her aunt
dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon's spume
have to come? How wide does the crack
in heaven have to split?
What would people look like
if we could see them as they are,
soaked in honey, stung and swollen,
reckless, pinned against time?

(Ellen Bass)