TO ALISON

 

Jerry Hagins

 

 

In our college lit mag

there was a poem entitled "To Alison"

which then proceeded to list

about 10 or 12 lines of dry facts

about annual rainfall in Brazil.

Alison later told me

that the guy who wrote it

had asked her out, she had declined,

and the poem was his assessment

of how he must have seemed to her,

uninteresting and irrelevant.

We were both seeing other people then

and later would be married to still other people

but I've always remembered that conversation,

Alison leaning forward at the coffee table I'd made,

sleeveless workshirt dipping low,

two empty wineglasses, the rain beating furiously

in Brazil.