https://soundcloud.com/diane-havens/voyager-by-michael-daigle

My poem “Voyager’  read  by voice artist and friend Diane Havens

Voyager

This is why we love.

To cast the sounds and breath of us afar, these parts of us we barely know;

these gadgets that spring from our creation,

set free by some sneak attack of you;

exploring, reaching, searching, homing in,

yet missing;

incomplete until from somewhere in the plasma we hear it.

This is why we breathe.

Lavender lingers on your neck, faint strawberry in your hair;

Your taste both sweet and sour; I touch your lips with wet fingers.

The dream is we never part: Mounted, probed and limbs locked;

Distance filled, the silence of one.

It is the adventure that holds, not the trail of leaving.

It is the experiment that drives, the convention bonds broken.

It is not words that fill the void; hollow echoes can not survive the vacuum.

These things of you ping through the universe; bounce, tumble and return, the mere tremble, joyful.

This is why we hurt: You looked up from your phone and smiled. The room emptied, only you and I existed in the moment of your eyes; I loved you then and love you now.

We should have pushed through the crowd; it would have parted, the space imaginary.

Your eyes, your hands, your mouth inviting; flying fearless, you were; yet grounded I stood, puzzled even now.

The widening gyre fills with clutter;

we turn away and turn back, then turn away again.

That moment centered, unfulfilled, a filigree of time, like the faint cry of a distant ship, a sound both thrilling and mysterious.

The pressure of your being remains; time circles. Your puzzling smile.

This is why.

We are.