Condolences

I give you my hand,

Half-full of condolences,

A mute, uncoiled kind of sorry,

My words laid dumb with sympathy.

Across so many miles,

The hard questions are harder to ask.

I remember the moat of silence

The last death dug between us.

I regret. The world is moving fast around us.

I imagine an ocean in you,

Having shared the same tides some century ago.

The slow ache of those currents.

If only we knew

What further sorrows await

We could carve a ship

Strong enough to carry us