PEACHES

You will always look back once (maybe twice)

         and I will always wave.

Today, sitting at the diner You recommended

    ( without You years now)

but finding the cinnamon coffee OK

     I recall that the “new” bakeries

picturesque near my rennovated address

   have baked the same hot crust for years,

repainting “special today” signs

        along  cobblestones

worn and round as day-old loaves.

     At the next table a couple discusses

Queen Cleopatra’s four marriages

     before meeting Caesar’s legions

and her suicidal sting by the poison snake.

     I do not know if this gossip is accurate

only that the Old Diner still has good coffee..

     Later, losing a glove irreplaceably

  while hailing a cab in a rainstorm

     I buy the only bargain gloves which fit:

cerulean blue suede useful but bright.

     now waving with hands of a summer sky

not yet arrived, I hail the nearest cab

     into destinations known only

           by an unknown number

a bit of You inside my heart

           like remembered wine.

a sudden cloud crosses this windy sky

     like a white veil blown suddenly

from the magician’s hand

     as nothing appears on the balcony

shaken with new wind

     but unwritten invitations to parties

or promises of balloons

     falling upward into the heavens

while You pass below unrecognized

     behind a beautiful scarf in the hurrying crowd:

someone I shall meet in the lobby

   or perhaps not at all as You suddenly look back

just as I board the moving cab

     smiling as the last taste of sparkling peaches

from the gift bottle of unexpected wine

     causes me to drop one sky-glove

always found later as a bargain in the easy bazaar

    round the corner from Your sweet, silent song.

 

from DISAPPEARING QUESTIONS

poems by Eugenia Macer-Story

copyright 1999--to be issued Fall 1999