4/26/08

Most of the wobbly, wooden folding chairs were empty.
I picked a conservative-looking seat, three rows from the front, and sat.
The cove behind the bookshop trapped the sunlight
like an inhabitable prism,
and the evening hadn't yet acquired its defiant chill.
The show hadn't started.
No sooner had I begun to enjoy my silent, singular anticipation of the poetry
than she strode in,
coyly, and took a seat three to my right.
I must have been staring dumbly,
as though I'd never met an attractive woman,
because the angled brunette with whom she had arrived
ventured a consolatory, "Hello."
"Hi," I scrambled to respond,
and, more politely, redirected my unsettled staring to the empty podium.
The show still hadn't started.