"Intimacy on a Sunday Afternoon" [by Kimberly Steele]

Intimacy on a Sunday Afternoon

After examining all the ways to contemplate
something (like a blueprint, or your leaving)
I spend several minutes discussing my options
with a small bathroom mirror,
beneath which lies a medicine cabinet,
beneath which lies a perfect rectangle
of glossy paint (whiter than the rest)
beneath which lies drywall, termites,
and possibly mold. I mention A. Einstein,
who stole secrets from God and was baffled
by women. I consider the years he spent
learning equations he did not understand,
to prove intuitions that nobody else did.
I cite T. Edison and telephones, B. Gates
and Windows, and how easily I could reach
you now, if you weren’t so hard to touch.
I think about effort and interference,
progress and stasis. And when I have lit
on a strategy — a way to feel knowledge today —
I sit in a comfortable chair someone else
put together, before a writing machine
whose programming I do not understand,
or pull out some paper someone else
manufactured, and reach for a pen
whose ink I am unable to duplicate,
and I give you this.

-- Kimberly Steele