the friend's arriving

i'm looking forward to your books
arriving before you do
so i can lay down in their fields
and mat down their grasses.
the mysterious patterns of
the invisible reader.

evaporated footprints in the margins.

i wash my feet in the stream
and then again walk wet;
what poet's feet
are clean or dirty?

this is the kind of conversations
we will have,
even from opposite banks of the river.

each sound is a sound
of you arriving.



9.20.05