WiFi History

In my left pocket,
protected by glass, silicone and passphrases,
is a list, forever safe,

of all those visits
I made to the web of our collective consciousness,
a history of somedays and somewheres.

That friend's house where I spent thursdays listening to Greek piano.
That surf shop in the Portuguese village which was once the end of the world.

That sunrise viewed over a bedecked window by the Ganga.
That Parisian library I first discovered Brodsky in.
That common room in Rome where I failed to console a tearful stranger.
That yellow bistro by the North Sea on a winter afternoon.
That Venetian streetlamp that bore a letter to a three year old.
That stormy night spent in a four poster bed in Pondicherry.
That Viennese apartment with old German books and fraying wallpaper.
That sleepless night in Firenze spent in anticipation of the Uffizi.
That room in Hyderabad that reeks of my tenacious youth.

That Bruges hostel where a housekeeper slipped me a note on Szymborska.
That breezy evening spent alone in a pool by the Vembanad lake.
That long railway dream through an Andalusian landscape.
That rainy day spent in London's streets dreaming of Turner's seascapes.
That Bangalore house where my poetry breathes quietly in a shelf corner.
That kind stranger in Coimbra who left her network open.
That blissful night spent on the Aegean Sea in a floating room.
That friendly old bookseller in Madrid who loved Tennyson.

All those homes, momentary and sedentary,
rains, chuckles, beginnings, cafés, chances,
horizons, friendships, errors, names, airports,
conversations, burdens, faces, absences, choices

reduced to a list narrated in circuitry and code,
a composition that can never comprehend its own beauty
but will, by design, relentlessly pursue its own future,
growing longer, longer and longer
until it no longer can

just like life
just like life itself.