a new look at an old poem

One of the more notable habits I have is my packrat-dom. I hoard everything.

Why? For moments like these.

Earlier today I was talking with an old friend and a name came up (the same one behind the "unassuming smile" poem I shared a few weeks back). It happened in the context of a mention I'd made about how a couple of poems I had written about young women I had been enamored with (the poetic equivalent of "having a crush on') and he flat out asked me if I had ever written a poem about "her".

Quirk #2...I don't lie about my poetry. I try not to lie about anything, but my poetry is, let's face it, my religion and you don't want to screw with the powers that be. At least, I don't.

So Alan gave me that old "Oh, yeah?" look he used to give me in junior high when I'd tell him I'd seen a dead bird or found an interesting book. Old habits die hard. I said "Let me see if I can find it".

He asked how I'd know it. For a man as organized as he is, he doesn't understand the concept of VSAM (Virtual Sequential Access Method, a scheme for indexing large files unde rthe IBM 360 architecture...I used to be a VSAM jock in the consulting world...because I understand indexing) as applied to the human mind. I know what everything is for and what it is about, I just have the only copy of my index, and it is imbedded in the RNA of my memory.

So, Alan, here it is...

modest smile (the title is new, it was previously untitled)

I saw you smile the other day, and the lights inside you pause and play,
making a moment, marking a point, a place, in time and in space
that I do not think will fade from my recollections, mid-course corrections
can't mask the pretty, petty imperfections that make life all the more real,
all the more interesting, as the drab grey walls fall as monuments to pretension
in an unmentioned thought, brought to me by your modest smile.

William F. DeVault. all rights reserved.

Not awful for something I wrote at 17. I had forgotten until I dragged it out my use of the phrase "modest smile" in it...modest as in a synonym for "unassuming". I must've bridged the gap without realizing it (or her smile really is that unassuming).