A Library Romance

I’m remembering today our first chance encounter
in the university literature stacks, she sitting
on the floor, cross-legged, reading a book
(later I would learn was a critical
study of Salinger, who I was writing

about) how when I stepped past her
and looked down, she looked up, and
like some scene from one of our
mutually studied novels, there was a connection
and then, somehow, we’re outside in darkness,

the campus in its full October autumn,
cigarettes, coffee, walking her to her apartment,
and that tenuous kiss, and a promise
to meet her again the next day,
and the next day and again the next day.

No Reply

I have all the letters spread out
on the table. A year’s envelopes all
addressed to me. Half of the conversation.
One view of our relationship. Now history.

I have all the letters spread out
on the table. A solo Scrabble game.
I stare at them hoping to compose
a reply to history, a letter unwritten,
one never to be sent. No reply.

Why do I keep them safely boxed?
They should be burned. They are dangerous.
The past should be smoke. Untouchable. Disappearing.
But something makes me reread them again.
Reading history and trying to reinterpret it.

Strangelets

Particles that can convert matter on contact
to strange matter, perhaps a strange star.

I feel more like a strangelet today.
I’m a Joycean quark croaking my poem.

Don’t touch me. I won’t touch you.

Afternoon In A Minor Key

Photo: Brent Keane

Afternoon of moments in a minor key.
Songs I would have sung with guitar
on a day like this while you
sat in bed, the covers pulled up,
bare shoulders, tea steaming in your hand,

jasmine air, the hours have a different
sound, emotional feel, and time passes harmonically.
This chord is solemn, sad, maybe mysterious,
ominous if we let our light fade.
Each minor key shares a key signature

with a major key and I need
to find that again while you move
to piano to play that D minor.
So melancholy, a lamentation, dirge or requiem.

Photo: Marcela Alessandra