In an Unaddressed Envelope / Linda Pastan

[alwaysashipper.livejournal.com]

Dear lovers I never met,
dear children I never carried,
you who were here for a while
clothed in the rags of imagination,
who brushed past me without seeing
and sang songs the wind carried away
as if they were so many leaves
to be raked and burned later:
your singing comes back to me now
beneath the dark elusive notes
of someone else's music.

There are so many faces in the world,
so many seeming strangers, and yet
I see your smoky hair, your eyes
through the window of a train that rushes past
with the swooshing sound of distances.
Listen. I know you wait for me
at a place I am always seeking.
You are as real as the changelings
in my favorite books, have the tenderness
of the sea on a calm day, and all
the patience of the long invisible.