Airport Relativity

First person and present tense
must strike you as odd—
how I could both greet and

record your emergence from
this crowd of funneled souls,
recount details that never occurred,

at least not regarding your
arriving at 4:10, then 5:25,
and here I am, still, at 8:30, but

none of that matters, had or has
to happen, since I write whether
true or not as I wait, first see then

don’t see your distinctive stride,
your hazel gaze in seventeen other
rushing women before your

breakthrough just now and all those
other times with your amazed smile
and into my open lines.

This is a reprint of work originally published in Ink, Sweat & Tears.

D. R. James has taught college writing, literature, and peace-making for 36 years and lives in the woods near Saugatuck, Michigan, USA. Poetry and prose appear in various anthologies and journals (including Eunoia Review). His most recent of nine collections are Flip Requiem (Dos Madres Press, 2020), Surreal Expulsion (The Poetry Box, 2019), and If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017), and his micro-chapbook All Her Jazz is free, fun, and printable-for-folding at the Origami Poems Project. His author page: https://www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage.