Sorrow like a Jungle Grows

You speak to me with all of the tepid haste

that this jungle setting implies

as though the sounds were as sticky as this air

and that the effort of forcing them

through layers of green grey shadows

is more than this moment is worth

I wonder how much it is worth

these scattered segments of a day

that drift in and out of your consciousness

like a handful of orchid petals along the water

how lovely and o they are gone.

So are you --melting in this heat

another shadow lost amongst the trees.

You have all the steady grace of the sloth

startling not in how you move

but that you do

You have been still so long

I had forgotten what it was to see

the length of your arms as they slide through the air

the calm of your eyes as you think and then act.

I still am surprised when you are gone.

What a slow thing grief is.