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Daniel Long Ago
by Leslie Silton

Our drowsy eyes are nodding
in unison,
in agreed-upon silence.
Just outside the window
the thrum of small car engines was punctured
by a drunken laugh.
(Some lout wanted a kiss, we supposed,
because laughter drifted up and over the window sill
across the stack of played-out 45's.

Two Africans still wide-awake are free to speak French
while Daniel and I are pretending the tectonic drift of our bodies
is the predictable result of human axis.

The hostess of the evening, an Economics major,
is munching a hunk of stale baguette,
crumbs splaying on her sweater.
She doesn't care enough to brush them away,
and we all smile
as she hands around the remaining nub,
drawing us back together
with this unlikely, profferred communion wafer ...

I feel we are continents joining --
Africa, North America, Europe --
as the natural world undoes itself:
winding back on the evolutionary line towards the beginning
but then deliberately stopping before the Void and Chaos
or the crash of spiraling galaxies
or that time when armies of antagonized meteors
went out looking for trouble amongst the supernova madness.

"Bon nuit," Daniel says to me softly, sweetly,
bringing me back to the present,
and pressed my head to his shoulder.

It was one night.
Only that one.
And all that I am telling you
is all that it was.
But look at me now.
How did we know it would be enough to last nearly forty years --
and still counting.

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