When you aren't here
and I call you to mind,
can you hear me?

I conjure a character flush
with flesh, your name as
sign of your life apart,

but have no sense
of whom I address.
Let me ask you: who who who?

Looking for you,
I wander through a dark wood,
a grove, a crowd

of trees, so many I at last
give you world enough
and time to never be found:

Can you see
that giving another something -
let's say you hours among trees

with the space they need
to make the poison choking us
into a potion healing all -

is an example of the gift without
strings, though you may think
there will always be strings?