What a nice looking young lady coming up the street
Is his reaction as he sees out the window by his desk
A girl make her way across his view, two stories down.
Am I being patronizing, he wonders, to label her so? Or
Condescending, to think of her in such old-fashioned terms?
Yet she does resemble persons in dresses between classes
On a college quad in the ’50s. At his computer,
He stops keyboarding a chatty e-mail letter
To a chum from those old days
Who has an especially appreciative eye
For female beauty. The girl is almost out of sight
But pleasure received from her moments is not over:
Though his aging eyes are unable to see the details of her face
He has witnessed enough to think of college times
And now attempts to recall which girl it was he liked the best,
Almost immediately deciding it was probably Mary Bradshaw.
(To be with Mary, he had at the last minute lied to – was it Alma Pierce? –
Over the phone, saying he would not be able to make it – he had a cold;
Actually, being with Mary at the time, he had instead wanted to continue
Staying with her fairly Irish charm, not minding hurting someone else.
And so Mary and he went out for burgers and came back to his apartment
Where, keeping their clothes on, they rolled around together on the bed.
Now, tucking away into his private mind the street apparition and the memory
She gifted him with, he types to his friend about totally different things.
