Six weeks: we have exchanged

 Two hundred twenty-eight e-mails,

 Half a major fable,

 Anguishes from two lifetimes,

 The gentleness of the lost-and-found,

 What remains of living;

 We have published a handful of poems,

 Made a place for new universes,

 Set sail to seed the stars,

 At last come back to Earth again.
 
 

 And this is the day the shrouds are wound,

 Sand to sand, rust to rust;

 The light is water, water light;

 They run where gravity pours out.

 There will be mercy, perhaps peace,

 Slaking of the hollow thirst that cores

 The solipsistic soul:

 Time has chosen sides.