Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Line, Please!

This was inspired by my friend Eve's poem "Early Morning Buzz". Seems like waiting in line is another of my writing themes. Time put to good use twice: once using it to read; twice recreating it in my own words.


Line, Please!

6/7/2010

You touch me gently

on my silent shoulder, wanting

only for me to pay attention

to the pharmacy tech calling

my forgotten name.


I've been lost in the Beloved

again and again and again

there under those florescent lights,

humming under respirations

so feeble as to be undetected.


You may treasure a lost reader

in your own family, to have

touched me with such care,

to speak in soft tones,

unwilling to startle the strange

woman with her miniscule book

and word saturated mind.


Wish I'd taken a better

look at you, noticed something more

than the emptied pocket

of your blue/grey/white plaid shirt,

when I realize too much

later you're the first man

in far too many painful years

to touch me without permission.


But for someone subsumed

in the grace and glory of

a passionate and well spun phrase,

I fail to capture even one whirling word

among those gleaming pearls

on a tender shoot of flaxen thread

to recognize your simple gesture.

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