Sweet William

When your roommate calls from the other room to say that Steve called and Billy Collins is speaking in half an hour in La Jolla do you want to go? you say yes and is it at warwicks and she says no d.g. wills you say i know it and you wear your black top, white skirt, and gold glitter shoes with the round chandeliers from the tiara room in your ears the better to hear with and you drive into the sunset down to the shores and onto girard where you pass old haunts and find parking in an alley not far away which is surprising considering the crowd spilling out of the bookstore and into the street so you hoof it around the corner past the maserati shop and settle standing on a bench looking over the worn wood pickets from Pannikin to the bookstore where you can't see but do hear the relaxing and unexpected and warming warblings of sweet william who reads from his last book the trouble with poetry which you love and applaud physically and into the new and some haikus from ballistics and the crowd is loving him and the word so you line up to have him sign the only book you own of his that he hasn't signed and he does and gets your name right this time and you are carried away enchanted again, rising and roaming with the Susquehanna.