Zeno

He lost Nancy this time last year

meek and slender she had served us baked potatoes

and leek soup in the garden just that summer 

we sat and ate, needing few words 

He is given guitar lessons

he likes Harvest Moon

we played it together once

in their living room, now just his, 

a big dirt hole — musty walls showing wire and pipe

like the Centre Pompidou

The internet is slow in the country

his face on my screen something like a police sketch,

a vague collection of dim pixels.

we sit at either ends of an absurd connection

and something invites us to cry