How Are You?

What I mean is

This is hard and I'm afraid you'll want to stop

Stop talking, silent as a ghost

Stop seeing, like a needle whose eye is passed through

Or see too much! discerning all.

What I mean is

I don't want it to be about me because it's time things were about you

For once, long overdue

For once, the universe giving you gentleness

Or spurring you on, the North wind at your back

Like Diamond, from that story I drank up as a child.

What I mean is I wish, I wish, I wish...

And if wishes were kisses we'd all be over the moon

(The moon, near full, silver on trees and bench

And on tremulous water, shining in the same sky,

Over the same world

Which makes us all so close and closer

Sometimes

Than we'd like when it's stretching room that's wanted

And if the earth were emptied would

Solace in such solitude be enough?

What I mean is

You are something bright and splendid

"Something apart from common life"

And the world is more wholesome