I know that grad school asks me to write papers about craft so that I can learn from what I am reading, but sometimes, when you really, really love a poem, you don’t want to look under the hood. You know it works. You wish you didn’t have to think about why. As if knowing would take away from your appreciation. Critial study always seems like a “destroy what you love” proposition for me. I rarely come back to those poems disgusted with them. I generally feel a heightened appreciation for them. But there’s always that sense of apprehension before starting. I think it’s because I want to believe it’s magic. I think I wish I had some of that.

The Distance

Two women are hugging each other goodbye
On the sidewalk in the tree-shadow
Of a late spring afternoon. It is not
Sexual, though both are beautiful.
And thought both are tall and lithe
Under their dark hair, the differences
Between them are infinite
And support one another. Behind them,
In the distance, buildings
Tangential to the sun catch fire a moment,
Then darken. A young man, hands
In his pockets, is coming toward them.
The women are crying.
They are not yet ready to part.
And it is not sexual.
Even the young man, who is surely lonely,
Slows as he approaches them,
Feeling a sudden reverence
He wouldn’t have thought himself capable of.
He stops half a block away.
The women part. They part
Like drapes drawn open
To catch the last light.
One of the women gets into a car
And drives away; the other
Waves, then turns back across the grass,
Perhaps to her apartment. And the young man
Walks on into the gathering
City twilight, which will be
More beautiful and lonely for him
When he looks up. His whole self is focused
On the precise spot of the women’s
Parting. When he reaches the spot,
He stands there. Just stands there
Transformed in the vivid air of their absence.

–Joe Bolton