Say mile. Feel the long-i sound slide
out your mouth, so unlike the clipped distance
between yourself and anyone else.

Donne said no man is an island,
but what about the rest of us?
Unmoored by days, by yards,
grass building against our separate
little homes like an ocean’s waves. 
I’m not so sure. So I

say acre. Feel the ache of it.
I don’t know why I keep returning
to the sameold words,
the sameold longing.