1 train, 2/3 trian, 116th Street to 42nd Street April 23rd, 2014\
Not a stranger, but she was brimming with poem potential. She is a former student of mine. I ran into her in the station. She is such a good writer, I had to ask. I hope you don’t mind these occasional breaches of the stranger rule. I feel flexible about it, but prefer to stick to the rule. The incident in this poem had just happened. It is universal and described with perfect accuracy and vim.
I just thought I saw you
Back to me, facing the candies,
fingering this week’s paper
And I warmed and burned,
And felt your gravity all over again
And as I passed behind you, got just close
enough to see the detail of your hair
For minutes I watched you,
admiring your small movements
But then – then you turned!
It wasn’t you, no
But another, a ghost I’d conjured
And pasted on a stranger
The burning stopped, the veil dissolved
on the platform