Sometimes there’s a long corridor to get there,
other times it assembles and is delivered
like starlight, like a fish in the mouth
of a cat proudly carrying it,
though it was handed to him. It’s alive,
it wriggles, and it’s a duration, a wave
I pass through as it passes through me,
or maybe it starts in me, or I am the spirit of it
for what feels like a minute or two
before it holds someone else in its grip
for a stint of unknown duration,
and maybe it moves like that,
from one to the next, maybe we connect
to each other, maybe we don’t,
maybe we never speak of it, maybe we make
something from it of air, from those who now speak
only through us, or the one resting her head
against the window of a bus, a wing
of dark hair fallen across her forehead,
her eyes half-closed, and the small child
clutching at her so he can stand and watch
the water streaking with light.