Togetherness

after Ali Lewis

how we spend time together

and would seem to be

even when we’re apart

the way absence feels like an event

an after-party walking

home in slow-motion

but becomes a warm-up act

all balloons and a rapid heart

depending on the days 

that have miraculously passed

which felt they never would

like sudden sun

after hours of blanket cloud

that somehow breaks 

not as in down and crying

but apart as in clearing

as in separating and drifting away

the way fallen branches 

are carried on a swollen river

lost to the tree on the bank

and the high winds long gone

depending on the storm

not its name but its strength

speed and direction

how it tears the wood clean

rips it from the trunk

like the ferociousness

of you and me

occasionally

how we are occasions

Paul Stephenson