.
This afternoon I came up the stairs from the subway
at the southwest corner of Broadway and 96th Street
at the exact same moment you were striding
north on that corner. Tall; dark overcoat—
it’s false to put together
recalled details, as if I’d seen a stranger.
How then to remember and separate what I saw?
It was you. Pure pleasure in recognition
doesn’t say it either. There you were
so simply before my eyes and walking fast
and a split second later you saw me too.
A gift, a gift! Did we kiss? I took your arm,
we hardly missed a beat, we crossed the street
and did our errands––wine, squid, number one
pencils, grapefruit––went home; went on living
This walking arm in arm in harmony
having come from separate directions––
this is a marriage too. It looks so easy
and is perhaps so easy and is not.
It always is a gift.
It gives a form to life
perhaps invisibly. I don’t look married.
