We walked along pretending
That we, too, owned boats.
We each barely owned shoes,
But we looked good, we thought:
For our particular brand of penury
Has never hurt the young.
She was very blonde, her family
Swedish, but her skin looked like
It didn’t care for sun that much.
She wore a hat, her blonde hair blowing
Everywhere around its edges, and
Behind her sunglasses.
I was bright in my array, and
Proud of who I walked with, although
Perhaps it wasn’t as rare an occurrence
For her as I might have thought at the time.
No matter: she was with me, when she was,
And there we were.
We split a Coke late in the day,
With change I’d found in the sofa cushions,
And rode my old car back to town,
Where I dropped her off so she could get ready
To go to work at the theater.
If you are wondering why
Our particular date didn’t really have anything like
Events in it, so did I, after almost every date.
But as stories go,
It has at least the merit
Of being true
