The moment she smiled over her tea cup, her shoes didn’t seem so tacky.
“All poetry is a cop-out,” she said.
And then my mind was crowded, the cells perspired and pressed against my consciousness. This was what happened. It wasn’t poetic or anything.
It was just that everyone in this cafe was conspiring for us to connect. In fact I could see a man standing in a dry field, perhaps somewhere across the street, his head bowed in prayer, wishing for the moment of spiritual contact between us. The whole universe must want it, I thought. Again, not poetic.
“You could make a poem mean anything. It doesn’t require a particular amount of intellectual might. That poem about the wheel barrow. You remember that one from high school? It was a freakin’ wheel barrow. Why do we have to assign this great political meaning to it?”
“I suppose you’re referring to modern poetry, then,” I said. “Because classical poetry is more specific, right?”
“Well, yes. Modern. Abstract.”
“Well… there are some, I suppose, who find its very ambiguous nature to be its most compelling aspect. Modern poetry is a kind of canvas –“
“An unfinished canvas.”
“…Right, exactly, an unfinished canvas, and we are to interpret, or project –“
“Whatever you feel like interpreting or projecting.” Her folded hands relaxed on the table in front of her.
Satisfied with herself.
“I take it you also do not like modern art,” I said.
“ No, I do. Modern art is… well, it’s-“
“Clean?”
“Well, maybe. I can’t say why I like it necessarily. But I wouldn't say it's that simple.”
My legs crossed, I pointed my foot toward her and said, “A Mark Rothko is not just blocks of color. It is the same open canvas. It may be a statement about form and color, but there may also be an explosive emotional component, just waiting to be extracted.”
Her pupils dilated. Her fingers now embraced a button on the coat in her lap.
Steady…
I sat back an inch or so in my chair. “If anything, you could assign a great political meaning to the paintings of someone like this one guy, this classical painter, John Singer Sargent. He was very famous. They were just portraits. Just portraits of rich people, which he was commissioned to do, which were understood to glorify their subjects.”
Match point?
Her consciousness broadened suddenly, which is to say, it closed slightly. She looked around the cafe and seemed more aware of the other patrons. She had been aware this entire time that she was a female, but at that moment came the awareness that I was of this gender as well. What did we look like, the two of us, sitting here? Both of us wondered. She looked toward the door.
I put the lid on my cup. I didn’t particularly care that she didn’t like modern poetry. But I wanted her eyes. A poet from any time period would have understood how much this was needed.
I excused myself and rose to leave. She turned her body toward me and her hand touched her necklace. Would she see me next Saturday? I told her I wasn't sure. I might not be in town.
And I left it like that and I walked out of the cafe. As I leave all things, unsure, unfastened. My walk became more deliberate as I reached the sidewalk. Each tree on this street knew me by two things: the strength of my feet in feminine shoes and my solitude.
There were times when I walked on this street imagining someone beside me. I would think of witty banter between my guest companion and me involving various objects in the neighborhood. Sometimes I would look at my phone. Sometimes there was confident eye contact with passers by; sometimes a hiding behind sunglasses. Why are people always so monotone in lamenting solitude, as if there is only one kind? On that street, on every block, in every square of sidewalk, I experienced every type of alone. Some frightening - I would always be alone - and some relieving. It was good to be able to be alone with oneself - which was a healthy and rational thought. And on this street, there were no reflective surfaces.
I was alone right up to my front door. It's like that moment when you're looking for a poem in your head - finding that exact landscape where you connect with someone else. I forgave her now for looking away. But she would never know. I opened the door and submitted myself to the next reality.
