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I am reading a book
of short poems
all by one author
who writes I think
a lot like me.
Or perhaps it is
the other way around
or not that way at all.
I’m not yet halfway through
the three hundred eighty-six pages
(including two indices and
seven (yes!) appendices
a preface and
an introduction),
which is good.
Good that I have more
than half the poems
yet to come.
This morning
right now
what moved me
to pick up a
pen and put
words about poetry
upon a page
(the words you
are reading now)
was a poem so “good”
that I thought I might
take a pencil and put a star
beside the title.
But I won’t.
I can’t bear to mark the book.
And I wouldn’t likely look
for that page again.
And if I were to lend
you this book
of many poems
I’d want you to
make no stars upon the pages.
I’d wish you might find poems therein
so heart-stoppingly wonderful
that you, too, would have to
pause
to catch your breath.
Perhaps you’d tell me
which ones they were.
I received this book
fourteen months ago.
I know
because the friend
who gave it placed the date
below the words she
wrote inside the cover.
By what she said there
I see
she may have thought
our ten-year friendship
was coming to an end.
I spoke with her
a day or two ago.
We did not discuss
poetry or camaraderie, but
not one unloving word was said
in the short hour that we shared.
And so
if I were pressed to guess, I’d say
our friendship looks as though
it is not yet halfway worn.
And what’s more
if I were to indulge my urge
to mark the margins of my book
and the pages of
that friendship,
I would produce, I do believe,
a galaxy of pencilled stars.
♦
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