We spoke only briefly, softly
           over coffee as we sat at a corner table

with a window view, saffron
           sunlight glowing through city smoke.

It was not such an unusual year:
           the Yankees had just won the pennant

again, and all the front pages
           of American newspapers were making

much of a presidential election
           ahead. But later that night I would be

in the Munich airport waiting
           for a connecting flight, about to travel

south for three months away
           at an Italian villa on the northern shore

of the warmer Mediterranean.
           I still remember that strange arrangement

of dried white flowers positioned
           between us with delicate petals as fragile

as the yellowed paper of this
           ticket still held in my hand decades later.

Volume 2, Issue 1, 2007