I just saw your face
– in an airport lounge
Or rather,
your features expressed on a stranger
At least in side profile anyway –
For three seconds as I walked by.
Who would have thought ?
More than a decade has passed
Since I rushed home
And flung open a sketch book,
To record you for my own safe keeping.
It had seemed ridiculous to me
That I would choose blue pastel.
It seemed juvenile:
Not so ridiculous now,
As my memory of you is
Real – in a sketch since discarded
But pictured – in my mind
– where I traced it from –
My recollection of you
Not of your existence
Which I can’t see so well now
For that is the bit
You lost
And tonight
This woman had
So eternal
And forever gone.
