even in the pitch dark

Despite everything - the distance, the unforgiveness, the hopelessness of it all - I can't help thinking & worrying.

I just can't.

*       *       *

All I've got is one eye and two brains
to love you with and I'm so concerned
especially at night for your peace
since the directions are uncertain
meagre and costly for two as for one
but to the tune of a progressive reluctance
we shall one day attain some kind of summit
don't you think? These are verifiable things:
that in the presence of two hundred screaming
aircraft known as 'the future' our slowly
unfolding certainties keep us upright
even in the pitch dark while the alarm clock
in my chest keeps me gentle, where
would you be about now?


--Peter Riley, 'Folded Message' in Passing Measures: A Collection of Poems (Manchester: Carcanet, 2000), p. 96.