Missing you

Where are you? I sorely miss the poetry

of your presence, though it’s nothing iambic
and I miss the flick
and flash of your tools, the free
flow words, the offhand trick
of slow turning thoughts, the silence slick
with them, flooding into me.

My days are the vast bare plains

when the bright small spots of the tourist balloons
have floated above them and then left, afternoons
of ancient tombs, honeycombed terrains,
exhausted birdcalls losing their tunes
and a lone heron pacing out flamingo lagoons
among flocks of indifferent standstill cranes.