Panama

You dreamed this canal, they'll learn, finding
your artifacts: kneeprints in sand, backpack,
a pair of shades by the tree. You knew

to trim distance, save time,
that love was water or sun,
and clouds clothed the nakedness between.

So you planned a flat route,
Atlantic to Pacific. Yet it failed.
For logic abhors voids and drowns them.

And now years later
it still shakes down to comings and goings,
to patience and forgiveness, connections and groundings.

For when the oceans are irrational and chaotic
it feels like you are the locks and I the water
climbing in steps, before flowing to beach.

When the waters are moonlit and sensual
you are the jungle, purple with orchids,
and I am within, febrile, delirious, lost.

And when the seas are tempestuous and rough,
I am the one who wants to get to the other side
and you are the shortest course across the narrowest isthmus.

-- Michael Zack