Contrapuntos

How one drum answers another's beat,
a way for the hands to know the slap-
rhythm of time, dusty paths forked

through verdant jungles. A crow's flight
across a pine ridge, how one ear hears
the ping-pong of shiny pebbles skipping

off a pond's surface. How a lover writes
letters to her exiled sweetheart, a morse
code of sighs on the phone when they call

each other. A fizzle and crack of despair
crosses the great distance. Pigeons
coo on the rafters. A sparrow picks up

a straw with which to begin a nest. Light
fills the concaves of dusk while fireflies dance
in the tall grass, like embers, first fading,

then lighting again. How one heart beckons
the sound of another, a mouth, a kiss,
what the eyes never blink out of existence.

copyright 2002 Virgil Suarez