By Linda Goodman
Date: 8 December 1998

Moon in Libra

When I think of you

 I don't need the crutch of cigarettes or coffee
 to face the morning

When I remember you

 I scold the dogs more gently if they climb upon my bed
 against the rules

Because of you

 I buy a bunch of violets every Tuesday
 when they're in season
 and bring them home, and keep them till they wither
 for no particular reason
 except that once I saw them sleeping
 near a bristlecone pine in Cripple Creek, Colorado

Since knowing you

I haven't felt it necessary
to win each game of chess I play
I notice lonely people more
on holidays-like Christmas
place fewer ornaments upon the tree
I like things naked
even me

I'm more compassionate and patient with fools who bore me 
even with the ones who ignore me

I take long walks
and yesterday I bought some colored chalks
to try to make a picture of a child

Yet, I can't find any mention of this magic
in the songs of Solomon
the sonnets of Shakespeare

Montaigne's essays
or Walter Benton's poems

They wrote of friends
or lovers
who come together now and then
We haven't said hello since August
or was it June?
that rainy evening-
or was it late afternoon?

We cannot call this love
How could it be
when we've never touched each other
and perhaps we never will
when we have only come as close
as resting elbows on a sill
and looking through the windows of an empty house
listening to the droning buzz of bees
kissing tangled clouds of baby's breath
and blue forget-me-nots
growing near a broken picket fence

  as children do, in enchanted gardens
  they half believe are haunted

Nor can we call this friendship
Friends share tragedies and joy by telephone or letter
Our last communication was a postcard in July
Why, one of us could even die
without the other knowing
in time to send some flowers to the church
or light a candle at a distance

It's like you told me once
if we never saw each other again
it wouldn't make any difference

  you didn't say it wouldn't matter
  you said it wouldn't make any difference

and did you know I understood the nuance?
It was so long ago
but, did you know?