Absence

I never eat sensibly when you’re away.
I make do with odd scraps of food
that don’t need heating up,
or nibble on a biscuit or two.
Under the pine trees
the dogs wait through wind and rain
for your return.

I fiddle with a poem,
searching for a true rhyme,
but settle for less.
If it gets any colder I may light a fire,
or I may not.
I take up a book of poems,
but after a few pages I put it down.

Far away the sea climbs the road
that you have taken,
and lazily climbs down,
leaving a white smear.
Under its plume of cloud,
Kapiti drifts towards Australia.
It will be another long day
before you return.

-- Alistair Te Ariki Campbell (1925-2009), New Zealand poet and playwright of Cook Islands and Pakeha ancestry.

Sonnet XCVIII: From you have I been absent in the spring

From you have I been absent in the spring,

When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,

Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,

That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer’s story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;

They were but sweet, but figures of delight

Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.

    Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,

    As with your shadow I with these did play.

--William Shakespeare (1564-1616), Pre-eminent English playwright, poet, and actor

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Alone for a Week

I washed a load of clothes
and hung them out to dry.
Then I went up to town
and busied myself all day.
The sleeve of your best shirt
rose ceremonious
when I drove in; our night-
clothes twined and untwined in
a little gust of wind.

For me it was getting late;
for you, where you were, not.
The harvest moon was full
but sparse clouds made its light
not quite reliable.
The bed on your side seemed
as wide and flat as Kansas;
your pillow plump, cool,
and allegorical. . . .

--Jane Kenyon (1947-1995), from Collected Poems, 2005



Photo: Laundry drying on a balcony in Cuba, 2017