Had I a poet’s way with words
when I was 15 and had seen, she
at ten, too, the new waitress, at
the Candy Kitchen, I, the lone customer
at the back table, a nobody but she
had smiled at me with feeling
so I invested a nickel, a cherry coke
my excuse to be in her company
minutes of an October afternoon

then would leave, written on a napkin
that she was pretty, like a butterly
on an orange, autumn morning
which she would find, along with
ice melting in my glass

George Tanner, Peoria