Delayed Decision

Or walking along the beach. Even thinking-

I honestly think he knows what I think.

I wrote all this a month ago

and already I've seen it somewhere in print.

DELAYED DECISION

It's Friday and there's hardly any time-

the week is dying, and the temporary typist

trim in her posture, impeccable in her clack

displays her various dimensions.

Would she go with me and sit cool and correct

on mezzanines of exquisite cuisine,

smile me her smile designed for strangers,

raise her cup of Stilted Comment tea,

small finger arched in delicate refinement,

lips reserved for delightful repartee?

Or would she glare with eyes

like nails of a boarded-up expression?

Would she press habitual buttons activating

"Smile," "Look Interested," or '"Yawn''?

Perhaps be like the willow. Or the oak.

Or the tenacious land-crab

who won't release its hold 'til thunder roars.

Maybe we would walk with our umbrellas

through the dark arrhythmic streets

to rut in the wallow of her pillowed room,

its walls of high school aspiration

caked with cigarettes and loneliness,

maybe laugh for no reason,

talk without a thing to say

as I ponder fireplace embers or the moon

for ways to reveal to her such things

268 as beetle tracks or stars or shiny stones

as though she were blind. . .

as though she had no sense.

But it's already Friday afternoon.

Soon Monday will smother us like smog,

like shovelsful of clumping earth

and the star will be part of the sky again,

the tree part of the landscape

and she part of the typewriter,

part of the room.