Romantic Evening for One
Twilight birds turn into frogs
or they in their voices do
singing secrets known only to owls —
as dead-eyed in the darkening
a snaking silver fish with teeth
listens to its next meal
While on another shore
In a different forest
it’s hard to tell
under the feathers and tulle
who’s a swan and who’s a princess
because here in some confusion
so often they are both
There’s a wizard there’s a queen —
always a wizard always a queen — and
her pale flock dances in military formation
while one of its number molts into
her human other then into yet another other
perplexing a prince unaware
he’s half of an interspecies couple
At this lake nothing ends well
but time after time I hope —
just this once —
love might triumph
because well you never know
and
at least until now
stranger things have happened
but then
there are evenings
of uninterrupted music
when the indifferent unseen
fills with fractured light and
the end of everything isn’t
James W. Gaynor is a poet working on surviving his third pandemic. His most recent book, I'll Miss You Later, is a collection of 20 poems written over the course of the AIDS epidemic in New York City from 1986 -1997.