Jim’s pink polo, as seen across the expanse of two heavy folding tables
by Joanna, who said “You’re looking so bohemian today!” and how everyone
turned to see what she saw, and the feeling of being looked at like this,
in unsolicited appreciation, and the morning unspooling in a loose intimacy
no one expected of a Tuesday, and in a library no less, and what it is
to notice a man’s shirt, and how noticing becomes a gesture or an offering
and how an offering becomes a celebration, and how a celebration changes the tint
of a library room, and how a room turns into a church, pews filled with things
that are already poems, like Jim’s eyes softening in the ripple of Joanna’s voice.
Like the ripe berry of the word “bohemian,” sweetening our lips as we heard it.