Lonely Planet

My dearest Ashley...
not sure where you are,
except you said you’d be
somewhere in Honduras.

I know we found it on the map
you bought me for my kitchen wall,
but as I sit here, at the table,
that makes it not much more
than a metre away, and how I wish
that were the case.

Don’t suppose you’ll get this;
it’s the third letter I’ve written
since September’s not made it,
but just to say, every day
the trees get barer, and the days
more dark,

and every day I think
of you in that classroom
with those kids
you’re trying hard
to teach...and you, not
much more than a kid yourself...

and every night – imagine
the gossamer thread
of a mosquito net
fretting shadows
on your face

drifting to sleep
with The Lonely Planet
in a bag by your bed,
and in the margins,
poems I wrote for you...

so loved, so young...
and so very much
not home.