Next Time by Joyce Sutphen
from After Words
Red Dragon Fly Press
2013
Next Time
I’ll know the names of all of the birds
and flowers, and not only that, I’ll
tell you the name of the piano player
I’m hearing right now on the kitchen
radio, but I won’t be in the kitchen,
I’ll be walking a street in
New York or London, about
to enter a coffee shop where people
are reading or working on their laptops. They’ll look up and smile.
Next time, I’ll rush up to people I love
look into their eyes, and kiss them, quick.
I’ll give everyone a poem I didn’t write,
one specially chosen for that person.
They’ll hold it up and see a new
world. We’ll sing the morning in,
and I will keep in touch with friends,
writing long letters when I wake from a dream where they appear on the
Orient Express. “Meet me in Istanbul,”
I’ll say, and they will.
SYNTHESIS 