To My Soul

                                                                                Jeanne Illenye's Orange Glow

Will I miss you

uncanny other

in the next life?

And you & I, my other, leave

the body, not leave the earth?

And you, a child in a field,

and I, a child on a train, go by, go by,

And what we had

give way like coffee grains

brushed across paper...

 poem by Jean Valentine

The New Yorker, April 23, 2007