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.
​

D. R. James has taught writing, literature, and peace-making at a small, Midwestern college for 33 years and lives and writes in the woods east of Saugatuck, Michigan. Poems and prose appear in various journals and anthologies, and his most recent of seven poetry collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press) and the chapbooks Split-Level and Why War (both Finishing Line Press). www.amazon.com/author/drjamesauthorpage