When you last saw me I was waiting
and now that you will never see me again
for all you know I still am. The time
it turned out was the last time I was sitting
staring across the top edge of the book
into something just above and past
the poem you couldn’t see there on the page
between us. Or I was walking—many times
you saw me walking and I can’t know
if once when you glimpsed me far away
in the park, too far away to hail me,
and you thought you’d tell me later,
it would be fun to laugh over, that almost
meeting in one of the places that are ours
was the last time. Maybe I was lying
suspiciously tired, my eyes to the ceiling.
When you last saw me I was waiting
like you for us to meet. And now
I still am, as far as you know.
As Far As You Know
A. F. Moritz
A. F. Moritz is author of more than fifteen books of poems, including Night Street Repairs and New Measures, and biographies of Stephen Leacock and Emma Goldman, co-written with Theresa Moritz. He has received the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His poems have appeared in multiple editions of the Best American Poetry anthology series.
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