I Know You But How?

Mutual admiration, infatuation, recurring memory, repressed memory, a spark of embarrassment across a restaurant was it just recognition, just attraction, just . . .?

 

I looked at you in the restaurant and saw

Your reddened face and wondered if it was from me?

In a way I hoped it was not, knowing some things I draw

I wouldn’t from anyone but in privacy.

Time and again I saw your eyes seem to stare

As if somehow I knew a part of you

That left my mind and never came back there

Just before visions met me that were true.

But I wondered whether my double saw you last,

Or even whether I held you before in gone times

In my feelings or my wishes that disappeared too fast

Like some vain poet’s sanity searching for rhymes.

Spending his life wondering about sunshine

Never guessing it was about his sweatshirt’s sign.