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.