Fly on the Screen in a Storm

It must be different, if you know
Other writers personally,
Professional, not marginal,

People you meet regularly
As coworkers, at conferences,
Part of your circle of gossip,

Lovers even, bodies you know
Through your own body, smell and touch,
Animal, creature, family.

Then the swirl of words around them
Can easily be mistaken
For bodily emanations

Only, part of conversations,
Muscles, personal behaviors,
And, as such, remain camouflaged,

As if we were only shadows,
Cast but permanently attached,
No existence beyond the owned.

But you withdraw, hermit writer,
One for whom people are one thing,
The persons of your daily life,

And the shadows of languages
Their own things, storms that have moved off
From the bodies where they began,

Like these clouds massed over the lake
That you know have far-off sources
But whose thunder is now their own.