A Sense of Connection, as in

moments like this one, the green carpet
looking for once just the right green,
is it the lighting, or your shadow thrown
from the tan-and-rust couch where you sit, lightly—
you seem in your reverie almost to hover—
clashing horridly in your incredible socks
with the magenta stripes above the sneakers
slashed by, even oozing with, crimson shoelaces;
and yes, to be completely honest, you’re wearing
the T-shirt of yesterday. Orange stripes. But
I don’t care, that is I love the angle
of your chin when you read and the color
of the shadow you throw without knowing it,
though even as I write, though I hate
to have to accept it just yet,
you’ve already begun to move, you’ve gone
into the kitchen, now calling softly to me
about a peach in the refrigerator, the mold
on the peach, asking me considerately do I want
to try to save it? and I’m touched,
a trifle puzzled but touched
and awed to the point of leaving my mouth open
to think that the color of it, the peach-mold,
probably exactly matches the precise hue
of the unshadowed carpet you’ve left me,
and I can safely say I’m delighted daily
with such unlooked-for symmetries as you
in your youness provide, all unwitting,
and I want to call softly back not just No,
let it go, but a harmonizing phrase, a signal
to bring you with a sudden smile in here
to evoke again that shadow on the carpet
that so often separates us, I’m actually craving
physically I think the even-toned, sturdy aquamarine
shadow that falls from the changeable zoo
of your otherness . . .