David Lee Garrison

Blessing

As I leave the supermarket, a woman
carrying yellow chrysanthemums
puts her cart away and waves to me.

I don’t know her
but I wave back and we both smile.
She has mistaken me for someone else,

turned us into old friends.
October sunshine falls like a blessing
on her baseball cap and my windbreaker.

I found my virginity
the other day, lost
for almost fifty years.

It was tucked inside
a yellowed newspaper
from August 9, 1974.

The front-page headline:
NIXON RESIGNS!
The night he gave up the presidency

I gave up something I was glad
to be rid of—that longing,
that loneliness like dusk

on the sluggish gray river
I could see from my third-floor
one-bedroom apartment.

Next morning, the entryway
of the building was quiet
except for the glide and click

of the janitor’s push broom.
I had a crazy urge
to tell the man my secret,

then laughed to myself at the idea.
The world looked brand new
when I crossed the sunlit street

to the A & P
and bought coffee and donuts
for her and me, for us.

 

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David Lee Garrison‘s poetry has been published widely, read by Garrison Keillor on The Writer’s Almanac, and featured by Ted Kooser in his blog, American Life in Poetry. His most recent book is Light in the River (Dos Madres Press). He is Professor Emeritus of Spanish and Portuguese at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.