For National Poetry Month, I’m sharing poems each day, one that I’ve written followed by whatever one from three sites that share a poem a day that strikes my fancy that day.

Today’s poem from me is a poem I wrote in January of 2004 for a friend, who was in South Korea at the time, teaching English as a second language. I also use the idea again of someone looking in the rearview mirror. The title doesn’t really fit, but Joe and I  often talk in non sequiturs so for us it makes sense.

Pharmacopoeia

	-- for Joe Middelkoop
 
Like the flitting glance in the rearview mirror
you give that person behind you
as if you know them, but you don’t,
it was like that, but it wasn’t.

As we walk past each other on the street,
I recognize you by the stubble,
the blue coat you wear in winter,
and your cellular voice.
Only moments later,
I turn around and wonder where you
came from.
 
You don’t hear me underwater,
slowly surfacing,
registering my words,
ignoring them, on the other side
of your telephone:
"There’s someone trying to talk
to me, I don’t know who they are."
 
Pavement hurts.
I get up.
I find some of you,
tattered pieces of the umbrella,
a half-opened briefcase
left along the busy street.
I run and yell your name, bumping
into passersby as I go,
faster and faster, 
until I'm on a freeway
and you're nowhere to be found
where the grasses stop 
and the road begins.
 
But really, the last time I saw you,
you were headed off to South Korea,
and the last thing you said to me was
you wanted to catch a bus and go
close enough to wave to the guards
in the towers along the DMZ. 

I awake with the horror that
I haven’t called or e-mailed in months.

Today’s poem from one of three sites that share a poem each day is “Meteor” by Grace Schulman on Poetry Daily.

As always, these poems are best viewed in desktop and sometimes lansdcape on your browser of choice.