Distance Learning

by Ann Marie Wranovix

It’s easy not to see
what happens in private
to bodies.  Take the flesh
out of the picture
and there’s no gasp or cringe
or tear.  We’ve made it safe,
this space.  The words are pure
now, blackboarded away
from voice, untimely, ripped
forth and borne unblooded
in the thin range of the air.

Though clouds of witness mark
our every meeting,
we travel blinded,
untempted now to touch
what is forbidden,
nor urged to offer
comfort or receive it.
The mortal riddles
drop through ghostly platforms
and hang there unremarked.

But we who face it
for untutored eyes
in front row seats may see
reflected back a gift:
in the forgotten fly,
the coffee dribbled
on the bosom, the lost
line from the loved sonnet,
the stumble at the board,
in droop and drop and grope
the embodied grace
of dissolution,

exposing to the gaze
our secret renditions,
as we at last begin
to give it all up.