The texts
are insistent:
it takes two points
to make a distance.

The cubit,
for instance,
is nothing
till you use it.

Then it is rigid
and bracelike;
it has actual strength.

Something metal
runs through every length-

the very armature
of love perhaps.

Only distance
lets distance collapse.



-Kay Ryan



(image "great rivers of the world, straightened, aligned and sorted by length" by Suárez Miranda)