First Meeting Copyright © Sally Warrell 2000

You are a far country:
I chart your territory,
Feeling for your borders,
Needing to know
Your frontiers and customs.

Where will you let me in?
And which parts of me?
So much and so much:
I parcel myself.

You reveal yourself in fragments
A village of personality,
A town, a highway.
I begin to see relationships:
These are the points onto which
I seek to map myself.

You speak again.
We smile,
Illuminating whole states,
Rivers and estuaries,
Deserts and lakes.

In time I will know more;
I will know your seasons,
And your times of day,
I might locate mountains,
Or glaciers, or hot springs,
Marshes or quicksand,
Heath or moorland,
But it may be that I never know
The wellspring of you.