They do it, the ones who love
without making love, by dancing with words
that reach out to each other, falling short
over the glass, fingers pressed
against monitor screens, curved
over keyboard bodies, faces
red as the sun, one setting the other rising
at the other end of the world, wet as the
oceans that come between their need to
come to, come to come to God come to
each other. They do it without kissing
the love that gave birth to their poetry, whispers
spreading steady like warmth from heated
laptops. These are the true romantics,
the dreamers, the mystics, the ones who
have accepted the logic of distance,
the mathematics of bridges and yet
don’t turn back at the sight of the gap, for
they are the greatest gymnasts: ones who
arch their backs over the globe, flipping
electrical switches to cross the synapses
of their bodies, neurons shuddering
in rhyme—these factors, like the bed
never been to, is the solution, to the
problem of souls divided by 2, reaching
over the universe defying
their lack of owned time.

read sharon olds’ poem here

Labels: love, poetry