Poetry

Only if you had been
an adolescent Marxist
in a post revolutionary era
or a later day Christian
after a religious age
has passed you by
at a May Day march of time,
when only children
inspire your absence
from the lost crowd
by the river's edge
alone with your notebook
holding onto a birch branch
with your carved initials
waiting for your lover
or in the silence of a monastery
from a retreat by iron doors
could you expect "Ida"
to surprise you.