This man and this woman 

yearn to walk together, 
to kiss, to join their lives, 

but all four of their arms 
stop above their elbows. 

This man and this woman 

cannot hug each other, 
cannot hold their closeness, 

can only feel their souls 
merging for a moment, 

but then slipping away. 

*Note:

Poem was inspired by Kristine Mitchell’s article in My Modern Met (13 October 2015), about Tamara Kvesitadze’s kinetic sculpture Ali and Nino:
Moving Sculptures Kiss and Cross Paths Every Day to Visually Tell a Tragic Love Story

See also Man & Woman Video at the artist’s website. (Sculpture was originally designed as A Woman and Man in 2007, then renamed Ali and Nino for the 2010 installation.)

Gary S. Rosin’s

poetry and haiga have appeared, or are forthcoming, in various literary and poetry magazines such as Concho River Review, Failed Haiku, Harbinger Asylum, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Poetry24, The Legal Studies Forum, and Visions International; as well as in several anthologies, including Faery Footprints (Fae Corp Publishing), Lifting the Sky: Southwestern Haiku & Haiga (Dos Gatos Press), Texas Poetry Calendar (Kallisto Gaia Press), Untameable City: Poems on the Nature of Houston (Mutabilis Press), and elsewhere.

His poem “Viewing the Dead” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Two of his poems appear in Silent Waters, photographs by George Digalakis (Athens, 2017). He is the author of two chapbooks, Standing Inside the Web (Bear House Publishing, 1990) and Fire and Shadows (Legal Studies Forum, 2008) (offprint).

Selections of Gary’s poetry and photography can be found at his website, 4P Creations: http://4pcreations.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Crossing Kansas by Gary S. Rosin in The Wild Word (7 February 2020); includes audio of the poet reading his poem