Attend

Attend

If
If I turn my attention to you,
Turn my head to see you enter the restaurant;
Follow with a strict gaze
That graceful sway of your graceful entry.

If I - for just one moment -
Give you
My fullest attention,
Watch Wakeful in that fixed way
Maintain a steadfast look in your direction.

If I should do this
I would be lost, again and again.


So
So, I do not look for your second coming.
The fixed price menu holds my sway.
Food following - fast, paper words and flavours,
Still the seeing and the waiting.

I
I sit at my table alone
And as the waiter approaches, bows and pauses,
I self-remember
A moment when I entered
You
With a graceful sway, a graceful entry.

You
You attended me then ,
You certainly attended me then,
But you are not in attendance any more.

The
The single waiter hovers with an appropriate professional regard -
Not knowing I am thinking of you
And not of the food.


In
In the mirrors on the walls behind the waiter
The door to the restaurant opens.

I
I shift my attention.

© By Vernon Goddard