The Complete Poems of John Keats by William Miller

The shipping cost more than the book

with all the poems, less and great,

the odes and their veiled goddesses,

sorrow glutted on a morning rose.

Inside the front cover was a handwritten note—

a woman planned to meet a man

for the first time, directions to the off-ramp,

the coffee shop spelled out in a careful hand.

Did they meet? Did they fall in love?

Was she crushed by a first impression,

how he talked while eating his scone?

Did she see the scar above his eye,

were his eyes deep blue, piercing

the last wall she’d built around

herself, the room where she hid

with her favorite poems, a potted plant?

I see them at the table, sitting with two

double lattes, hopeful with all the hope

a first date allows, frozen like figures

on an urn, forever young.