The Meeting

Alfred Corn

Rekindled consciousness, abrupt as a slap 

 That makes identity slot in, its clip 

 Coinciding with that signature 

 Stride acquired roughly the same year 

 I learned the best defense was an offense. 

 It's been my hup-two-three-four ever since. 

Close to an hour of floating unawake 

 Over a book, my mind on coffee break, 

 Indifferent to the train's compulsive surge 

 At minus-fifty feet. I felt submerged 

 Beneath whitewater's liquid hammers, some 

 Cool, tumultuous onrush of time.... 

Amphibian! embody your emphatic 

 Renascence at street level. Twilit, lamplit 

 Hours stretch ahead, where, with a high-test 

 Line smoothly unreeled, players will all cast 

 Themselves in the lead role, while those they've turned 

 Out to meet will do the same in turn. 

Recurrent happenstance: it sort of steadies. 

 First I, then you, will swim the crowd's brisk eddies 

 And swirls, we'll fist-bump, hug, invent smart-aleck 

 Putdowns and tender compliments alike. 

 And when it's time to remove hooks, oh, we'll 

 Be careful, we'll be kind as possible.