Book Details

THE PERSON YOU WERE

It is all about perception,
point of view, I could tell my students,
explaining certain aspects of becoming
what we like to call a writer,

like the evening we attended your
high school reunion. How I observed,
though not then as a writer gathering
material for a story or poem,

but seeing happiness in your face,
in your arms encircling a former
classmate, your searching eyes
finding the thin teenager who played

basketball or jumped in cheers
or studied relentlessly in Latin class,
almost hidden in a face filled with
the passing of years, but still there.

Happy in your happiness I watched
from my table, my coffee growing cold,
unable to keep up with your movements,
my former red-haired cheerleader,

my Latin champion, the one I have
looked across so many other tables at
during the years we have owned together,
imagining you in the years before I

knew you. Tonight you are the person
I did not know, the person I, as a writer,
might have created, and I hold you
close in my aging, invisible embrace.