We call out for love

 

           and there it goes; my lips release

across the room the noun of you,

and to the sill, the window cracked,

it slips out from the binding space.

Unfettered word of love and longing,

unleashed to air and seeming gone,

an echo, ghost of language, ghost

of heartfelt calling. Right or wrong,

the winds conspire to lift the sound

which whirls about deciduous trees

and tangles up in complex forms

of branches, leaves and density.

But language frees itself and flies

though wingless, breathless--strength alone

in being thought empowered by soul.

And there it goes, among the clouds,

conspirators too, imposing wet

and freezing, batterers that exhaust

until the utterance falls with rain,

succumbing to the fate of drops

that have no life but drowning.

But there you stand, those miles away,

precisely under the message,

your face turned up, mouth open,

an answer at the ready.