LONGING

Longing is longer than a road than the rainy season than a snake’s thought or

a cat’s gaze longer than the weeping figtree’s tangled hair than the nun’s vespers

Longer than the Milky Way than the sixteen-thousand-line Homeric Hymns

Longer than the lingering cicada’s dream and the blank Cambrian era

Longer than a kiss lives on a pillow than the remorseful shadows of the streetlamps

its measure the span of a cherry blossom’s immeasurable descent