Love poses a Question Once there were answers: things corresponded, the planets in motion struck heavenly chords, all was as it should be. If the humours got out of sorts, the gods laughed and fetched healing elements from the four corners; if Pan, sprung, made pandemonium, it was answered. The world is noisier now, and depleted of explanations. Who can say how we are nourished by land-mines or car-bombs? What is a bomb? Tell me, because my heart trembles. Brothers and sisters, the earth is a question that swallows sense. Walking with you in the Alberta hoodoos, laying a hand on the bark of a lodgepole pine, letting the long flowering grasses wash clean the crowded mind; world-as-it-is. You asked, I listened; this much was given. Mornings, the sun rises and traffic intensifies for a time; oceans flood, then recede; modulations without end. The world, with you in it; then kingfishers, rattling over the plain. This is not a loss exactly I buried the cat in the hill I look at every morning over coffee. Dug the hole, laid it in, tamped the clod over. It used to purr when you played your tapes of Oum Khalthoum, Empress, Nightingale, Star of the Nile. You sang along swirling the offbeats and drones I never could wrap my tongue around. I spoke like the cat you said. I couldn’t look as I buried it but now most days I can look at the hill without thinking of it, and this is not a loss exactly. But something spins when I look away; at the edge of hearing, a voice warms up.