Across a Cowded Room

Across a Crowded Room

By Cleve Taylor

*

Celebrate, the Tigers had won

Wine by gallons, and beer by kegs

When empty, the celebrants

Smoked and sipped the dregs

*

A boy or a girl, hands around the other’s neck,

And whispering of things that could be

Enjoying the sensual naivete of youth

Enthralled equally in alcohol

and the act of being free

*

But across the room sitting alone

Beneath a lamp engrossed in a book

Oblivious to the chatter and the booze

She read with only an occasional upward look

*

I saw first the book then second her eyes

Fixed on me a gaze of which I returned

Intrigued and enamored with this maverick from the herd

I knew this bookish girl was the one for whom I yearned

*

And it lasted, the library our courting ground

True love across a smoky room we found