I Wish I Were a Poet

I wish I were a poet.
I love poetry’s precision,
joyous economy of words,
unexpected epiphanies.

Last night I went to
a reading in New York City.
The writer is famous,
his poems perfect.
He read about mortality,
transcendence.
He talked about poetry like a man in love.
“I couldn’t find a container for what I felt,” he said,
“until I tried to write a poem.”

Fifty years ago, he was a football star.
We were students together in high school.
Skokie, Illinois.
No one imagined his secret life then: poetry.

Pieces of my past were scattered at the reading.
Nothing pointed to the future.
The poet’s flat Midwestern accent,
our Niles West High School connection.
I saw Mr. Elber in the audience,
my daughter’s Hebrew school teacher in Nashville.
Years ago, he’d sent her to the principal too many times.
“I hope she forgives me,” he said last night.

I bumped into a woman there, too.
We’d met at a conference.
She writes terse poems about grief.
“Are you still writing stories?”
she asked after the reading.
“Yes.” I paused.
“I’m writing a novel, too,” I said,
reluctant to admit that in this crowd.
I imagined papers strewn on my desk,
staring at me like defiant children,
crying out about illness, betrayal, divorce, and loss.
The woman smiled sympathetically.
“A novel,” she said. “That’s a lot of words.”

Published in And Then, Volume 20, 2017