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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! seven!—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 was tempted to
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.
If I were to lend
you this book
of many poems
I’d ask you to please
make no stars upon the pages.
Of course 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 poems 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 can 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
in the short hour that we shared
not one unloving word was said.
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 penciled stars.
♦
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