HOTEL MERCURE
I could say you loom
And you would. Could reach
My hand to touch you—
Lucid swimmer, slick
Whipper snapping through
My window’s dark. Forgive me:
Could almost reach. Moon,
Remember that hotel-
In-the-round, spinning
Us through the Paris night? You
Used it as your mirror, every hall
Curving out of sight, into
Geometry’s continuous now. How
Did they slice our room? Pie-
Eyed, I recall
Only the bed, too small
For any one. Cheap wine, loaf, a living
Up to an idea. Surely
We were happy? In time,
In time. And you?
You haven’t aged a bit.
Katharine Coles’ fourth collection of poems, Fault, came out from Red Hen Press in June of 2008. She is a professor in the English Department at the University of Utah, where she teaches creative writing and literature and directs, with co-director Fred Adler, the Utah Symposium in Science and Literature, which she founded. She is currently on two-thirds leave to serve a two-year appointment as the Inaugural Director of the Harriet Monroe Poetry Institute at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago. In 2006, she was named to a five-year term as Poet Laureate of Utah.