Good morning, Gloria.
How is the morning?
It was only evening here.

Gloria,
What color was your hair?
Was it gold, or blue, or brown or green?
Was your face dark or white?
Was your name chiefly heard or seen?
Did you remember me after you went?
Are you with me?

Good afternoon.
I must confess, Gloria, that I'm disappointed.
He said he could do anything, but that didn't mean he would do anything.

Hello, Gloria.
How is the war you're surely waging?
How are the flowers you're surely holding
In your hair?
How is your voice carrying
Over the night of night air?

Goodbye. Just kidding.
I must confess nothing I say is of any worth.
But you weigh each word? And you wage your war?
And was your voice high or low?

Gloria,
How do the clotheslines look,
The banners and the blouses blowing?
Grass oceans and water meadows
Where you were walking.

Sea changes and key changes,
Living and living.

What color is the sky?
The blue grass where you walk
Sending forth windsocks and wool socks
Back and forth
Everyone waiting on your beck and call.

Voids and voices,
Landing and leaving.

What color was your goodbye,
Gloria?
Where did you send it
First?

And where is the war you're surely waging?
Whose spirits and stories
Are you surely saving?

What color is your hair?
Did I know the name?

And where is your face?
Which river is
Gloria treading?
And which valley were
The blue tears shed in?

Parapets and parasols
Cherubim and white chairs.

Gloria,
There's no point. And no need
To find another word
To tell you
What you've already heard.

How tall? How fast?
How long does your heartbeat last?
How many fingers and toes?
How far? How far,
How very very far.
Yet someone close to both of us knows.

It's fine,
I'm not fine.
You're fine.

Gloria,
The second hand ticks once,
And ends up in the same place.
The second-hand words stud your sky
And I'm in the same place.

And I'm not fine.
You're fine.
I'm all right.

We'll be all right
Because Gloria is fine.

Gloria, there are a lot of things we start to say
And leave unfinished.
Because we're not all right.
Forgive us enough
To let a clothespin slip
And send your straw hat this way
Before it's all the way dry.

Reign forth,
Gloria.