Kate Moss

Was it a sleepful illusion, my remembering

you have no want of me?

How strange it is feeling a sense of unmerited silence

—a rejection of spirits, almost.

It felt like a heavy dream

my almost loving you—whomever you are. 

Were you wanting Kate Moss?

A ransom of burning elegance? Perhaps

a small poem

for a flicker of pleasure? Or was it more so a person to care affectionately 

for you?

Was it a person to yield? A stillness ever crafted to listen?

With cupped hands, I would

have passed it all to you, friend. 

You can have it all, even now. 

I am a circle. 

I am somehow, a lush green Edward Hopper painting of a woman

reading on a slow

passing train with an orange bridge of light though 

a window.

It may interest you to know, I am 

also a comforting black sweater as 

soft and sad

as Summer’s last night 

of stars.  

I am not, however, Kate Moss

or a stunning, erotic beauty or even an orange

sun setting by a woman

through a train’s window. 

You are, perhaps

the orange settling light

wedged on a concrete bridge protecting

a river, small running

eternally away. 

Even in my own existence as a small green painting

you are somehow

a part of it, more gloriously

so than any other component of it. 

You are always a part of something I see. 

Yet, though we are parted now

I wish still I could paint

an ear onto the silence so you can hear

wonders. 

I wish I could have sewn

a line

across the states to speak with you.

Friend, if you had expressed

even unkindly it was

a body, a woman, an idea

a feeling of withdrawal—a conflict, 

I would have understood kindly. 

I would have 

with sincerity embraced your hand

and fallen asleep, at last. 

Kp