The Poet in the Papers

Let us live near each other,

Even though we’re far apart.

We live in a swirl of words,

So much more conversation,

For some of us, with language

Than with any other flesh,

So many people we know,

We only know, as language,

Streams and streams of sentences.

Every reading’s a seance,

In a sense, tuning voices

Coming from the great beyond.

Read the lines and imagine

The people and arguments

And laughter filling the head.

Today was a rash of think

Pieces about loneliness,

Widowhood, solitary

Living becoming common

Among the free, the confined

Living in solitary.

And so there are interviews,

And so we read the phrases

Of the people interviewed,

The disembodied language

We code as conversation.

So we live near each other.