Almost within reach

I never touched you
- a thing I regretted -
for I was too fragile
for the shatter of glass.

People thought then that
space was a great thing,
the room and the air
for the soul to roam:
science's brilliance
with gain unrepenting
unremitting,
emitting alone.

Then there was time,
Then there was place;
I was both foolish
and wrong and afraid.
I touched nothing
- a shadow, a ghost.

Now I have found you,
through the wonders of metal,
and wonder myself
what right I may have

why I think,
in my cold mortal hopes,
of declaiming, addressing,
grasping, retaining,
regaining the use
of things I don't have.

You are almost in reach,
mine who is not mine,

as near
as a caged bird
who flies to the sun in
the smallest of dreams.

Almost in reach
I think you will stay,
for you were never
my lover, it seems.