You asked me if I knew the poem “Having a Coke with You”

I said I vaguely remembered it but didn’t really

so you recited it in its entirety. We were walking

from somewhere up by City Hall down toward South Street

and the whole time you were reciting it I was wondering

“Was that the last line of the poem?” after each line

and each time I thought that, I thought it even more

because as the poem got longer the fact that you were reciting it

from memory became incrementally harder to believe

until about two-thirds of the way through the poem

I stopped thinking about how long it was and just started listening

which I had been, but only a little, because of all that. Anyway

then I started listening to it completely, believing

the poem itself to be the sole reason you were reciting it

but as soon as you finished you started to talk about how

you used to think that that poem was just about how

liberatingly banal being in love with someone was

but then you said you’d started to think more recently

it was more about the idiocy of caring about art at all

when you could spend all that energy caring about someone

you loved instead, and you said you were wondering where

I stood on that question now that I had heard the poem

and I was as struck by the question as I was stunned

that you could so casually recite such a long good poem

and that you hadn't even recited it primarily to solicit

appreciation for your recitation so much as to ask

what I thought about what you had thought about it

then, versus how you thought about it now, and this was

when I knew I wanted to be with you forever.