Saturday, March 2, 2019

The Poet

Recently, I met a man--a poet. He captivated me from the first glance. He's a handsome man, but that can't be the only reason. There are plenty of people who are handsome, but who don't light you up.

It was only after I'd watched his delicate hands move while he talked that I learned he was a poet. And isn't that Romantic? Every poet has got to be, more or less, the Wanderer Above the Sea Fog. Do you think he carries a little notebook in his breast pocket to write down phrases that strike him? My breath just caught thinking of it. 


He is not mine to have. But the thought of him! The thought of him is mine. My heart hums down through my arms, and every page of a library book I touch is a portal to the primeval soul of the poet when I'm graced with the thought of him. The moments of vague rhapsody pile up on top of each other in the seconds that I live inside the thought of him.

Once, long ago, I wrote about whether it was moral to appreciate someone just for their outer beauty, since they did nothing to earn it. Now, though, I feel like the thought of him--that irrational romanticizing based on the extrapolation of the barest facts--sets me neatly inside the web of the human experience. We are all bound to one another in great jumbles of gossamer threads.