Images

This miraculous friendship startled our lives,
taking them into a territory
we had known only as a rumour.
Compulsively we mapped its shape and song,
through photographs, repeated images—

a rowboat swaying near an empty jetty,
rusty rowlocks, an oar upon the surface
of a hazy, mist-hung river; a water bird
waiting as if throughout eternity.
Impulsive songs and lyric poetry

showed a new dimension, and revised
our way of mapping how we thought and lived,
and yet we hardly knew this miracle,
how our mutual trust identified
both of us, embodied in its phrase.