Poetry
Soundings for Distance
Two distant shores cannot erase the water between them, but they can learn to measure it without mistaking distance for absence.
R
Richard Nkwenti
2 min read
Between two shores, the water keeps no promises.
It receives each voice as weather,
breaks the sentence into silver pieces,
and carries none of them where they were meant to go.
On one side, a figure raises a hand.
On the other, another hand answers—
small gestures made enormous by distance,
two dark commas refusing to end the line.
The old sailors measured depth with rope:
a lead weight lowered through green silence,
knots passing one by one through the palm.
They called the act a sounding,
as if the sea might speak its measure
through wet hemp and pressure.
What instrument measures the space between souls?
Not miles. Miles are innocent.
Not time, which can deepen a bond
or bleach it pale as driftwood.
The truer distance begins where translation fails—
where care arrives wearing the wrong expression,
where one person offers shelter
and the other hears a cage,
where both tell the truth
in languages built from different storms.
At dusk, buoys begin their patient music.
One bell, then another,
each moved by a wave it did not choose.
The notes never meet in the air,
yet together they mark a channel
through which a vessel may pass without wrecking.
This is not reunion.
The water remains.
The shores do not lean closer
for the sake of a beautiful ending.
But the two figures learn another practice:
not shouting until meaning drowns,
not naming the horizon a betrayal,
only lowering a line into the deep
and feeling for the smallest answering pull.
Far below the glitter,
the weight touches ground.
A knot tightens in the hand.
The distance has not vanished.
It has, at last, been sounded.
