(2001, revised 2026) (c)
I got here-
one contact after another,
trying to engage him.
He was that boy—
singing at Bible Camp, 1973,
in middle-school—
ignoring the ridicule:
old-man’s clothes, crew-cut.
His voice—velvet.
Or the fourth-grade boy—
who gave me
an embossed, ribbon laced valentine
instead of the dime store
punch-outs
He set me apart.
And that man—
4 a.m., sipping cafe au lait,
talking poetry.
He is the loquacious bus driver,
the barista who remembers my order,
my own private celebrity.
Once he was once even my husband.
But what man can hold him—
long enough?
The drone of days—
the bills, the spills, small
fractures—
and he becomes
patch and paste.
