"Not yet a breach, but an expansion"

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.
~ John Donne ~

A clear umblicus
goes out invisibly between,
thread we spin fluid and finer than hair
but strong enough to hang a bridge on.
~ Marge Piercy ~
A couple of excellent poems reminiscent
of Franz Kafka and Czeslaw Milosz:

Bridging
Being together is knowing
even if what we know
is that we cannot really be together
caught in the teeth of the machinery
of the wrong moments of our lives.

A clear umblicus
goes out invisibly between,
thread we spin fluid and finer than hair
but strong enough to hang a bridge on.

That bridge will be there
a blacklight rainbow arching
out of your skull
whenever you need
whenever you can open your
eyes and want
to walk upon it.

Nobody can live on a bridge
or plant potatoes
but it is fine for comings and goings,
meetings, partings and long views
and a real connection to someplace else
where you may
in the crazy weathers of struggle
now and again want to be.
~ Marge Piercy

A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
As virtuous men pass mildly away,
And whisper to their souls to go,
Whilst some of their sad friends do say
The breath goes now, and some say, No:

So let us melt, and make no noise,
No tear-floods, nor sigh-tempests move;
'Twere profanation of our joys
To tell the laity our love.

Moving of th' earth brings harms and fears,
Men reckon what it did, and meant;
But trepidation of the spheres,
Though greater far, is innocent.

Dull sublunary lovers' love
(Whose soul is sense) cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
Those things which elemented it.

But we by a love so much refined,
That our selves know not what it is,
Inter-assured of the mind,
Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss.

Our two souls therefore, which are one,
Though I must go, endure not yet
A breach, but an expansion,
Like gold to airy thinness beat.

If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.

And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.

Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.*
~ John Donne

This might look like sunset -- or a forest fire! --
but was actually sunrise, 21 March 2017

P.S.
Also thinking of recent crime series The Bridge
and haunting theme song "Hollow Talk"

And then you cut
You cut it out
*And everything
Goes back to the beginning . . .

Songwriters: Anders Rhedin, David Hughes,
Fridolin Nordsoe, Jannis Noya Makrigiannis
Sung by Choir of Young Believers

Also -- beautiful, poignant, unforgettable

Featured in Nobody's Darling
"Troubled Man" from Quiet Lights
[lyrics below, in comments]

Theme from Home Fires
"Siren" by Samuel Sim

Theme from Summer's Lease
Carmina Valles by Chameleon
Composer Nigel Hess

Music video from Six Feet Under
~ Pilot Final Scene ~
Waiting by The Devlins