A DISTANCE OF SUMMER
Ten Poems by Leonardo Dellarocca

I could see everyone I knew
going about their lives
without me

like birds
on an April day
touched by
the thinnest light
the weather inexplicably perfect

The distance between us
filled with towns

It could have been a dream
where everyone was a stranger
lived in old white hotel rooms
the wallpaper
a string of delicate sparrows

Struck with an unthinkable language
my mouth grew full of purpose
and could not open

And each of them, everyone
became more and more
a measurement
I could never fathom

After a while I became less and less
astonished
at the distance of a lightyear

and how summer after summer
vanished without so much as a
wave of the hand