One way or another, a Love Poem, at last 

There was a particularly wonderful woman 

and what I did to try to win her over 

is almost as unforgettable as she was, is. Almost. She wins.  

The Saturday of our date I got ready 

by going down to the independent bookstore, 

that was my first angle of impressing her. 

Well, second, my second angle, the first being  

Lemon-Pledging the shit out of my apartment, 

which made her cough a lot a little later. But Smilingly. 

At the bookstore, up and down the aisles, 

up and down the stairs, I picked out my book. 

Being and Nothingness, by Jean-Paul Sartre. Bingo. 

(I was probably smart back then 

maybe a little bit rustic

so I resorted to these sorts of subterfuges

and they always backfired. But it all always worked out.) 

I took the fat philosophy book home, bent up the pages, 

cracked open a beer, accidentally spilled it on hundreds 

of the thousands of pages, knocked over my cold cup 

of morning coffee on the cover and casually flipped the book

on the couch where I’d been reading all that day long.   

I had a spring in my steps as I ran up hers

to the top floor, her door flew open 

with a perfumed whoosh, and off we went to dinner. 

During which dinner I discovered that she 

was a philosophy major

in the university that we’d both attended, 

her, philosophically attended, to a PhD. 

She noticed me sliding down, a little cornered 

in our red-leather corner booth of the Savoy Grill.

She asked if I was having an existential crisis, but

having not really read the book, I hadn’t a clue what to say. 

After dinner, back at my place, after I opened the windows, 

and once she’d stopped coughing, 

she told me she was charmed by my “well-thumbed” book 

and I could tell by the look on her face, so close to mine

(as she flipped pages, reading all the places I’d underlined) 

that she was not making that up, she wasn’t just saying that. 

Our first kiss happened then, her up on tip-toe 

Being and Nothingness falling from her free hand 

to the floor between her shoes, 

already resting on their sides. 

We were in love for awhile. At last, we said goodbye. 

But it was easy, we still loved each other. We said so. 

When we said goodbye, she was still shaking her head at me 

as she walked away, looking back at me as if 

I were an un-subtitled French movie, but still, 

she looked glad. (And I bet she spoke French, too.) 

I would remain rustic a few more years 

but just so this poem doesn’t end narcissistically (sp?),

I want to say that, as I walked away 

I was looking back over my shoulder at her,

and I was shaking my head, too. 

She was great. 

Unforgettably.