The shadows on the wall, our close companions,
begin as light—a trespass through trees and glass

before transfiguring the carpeted hall:
in the painting of an open window, the curtains

blow forever toward a sea, unseen over hills,
far from our domestic urgency,

where the southern morning breaks in,
echoing on the surfaces, the sway of pine and sweet gum

—everything we shut out,
even now, with the wind-speckled lake and the reeds
           ecstatic as holy rollers, even as the hospitals and morgues fill and fill,

I’m caught in my longing to be with you
somewhere else, lost in the surge of ten million

beating hearts beneath the tall towers, 
uncountable strangers going about their lives,

their warmth separate from ours and not.

Cameron Alexander Lawrence lives in Decatur, Ga., with his wife and four children. His poems recently appear in The Florida Review, The Shallow Ends, Ruminate, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, West Branch, and elsewhere.