Three poems, one long-distance ache — moving from the pocket, to the wide dark, to a parallel universe. Each writer stretches the same longing a little further from the body.
Ted Kooser starts close: a folded note, creased from being opened a thousand times, checked and rechecked for whether the words were right. The ache here is domestic, almost shy — the wish to be so close that when she finds the note, it is still warm from him.
Carol Ann Duffy widens the frame. The lovers are no longer in the same room, maybe not even the same country — she imagines the dark hills she'd have to cross just to reach him, singing a song of desire he cannot hear. Distance, here, is geography.
And Trista Mateer goes further still — past geography, into other universes entirely. Two people who never touch, never speak, imagining the versions of themselves who got it right somewhere else. The poem's final exchange lands like a door quietly closing: that's not how this works. A soft, certain grief.
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Pocket Poem
If this comes creased and creased again and soiled
as if I'd opened it a thousand times
to see if what I'd written here was right,
it's all because I looked too long for you
to put in your pocket. Midnight says
the little gifts of loneliness come wrapped
by nervous fingers. What I wanted this
to say was that I want to be so close
that when you find it, it is warm from me.
Somewhere on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine
the dark hills I would have to cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you and this
is what it is like or what it is like in words.
In a universe parallel to this one, you and I stay up some nights, holding hands in bed, worrying about all the versions of ourselves that don't end up together.
Parallel You says, "Somewhere we never even kiss."
Parallel Me says, "Somewhere we never even touch."
Parallel You supposes that the universe in which we never cross paths must be a kinder one than the universe where we make the effort to love each other and fail at it so miserably that we part ways and never speak again.
Parallel Me says, "That universe doesn't exist."
Parallel You says, "That's not how this works."