Wednesday afternoon

Sue and I are often hard-pressed to schedule time together. Today we slipped in a few hours while my car was being serviced in her neighborhood, and where better to spend them than Powell’s on Hawthorne? I had just sent Sue a poem our friend Alberto Moreno posted on Facebook this morning. 

Do you remember
Do you remember
When you were bright and new
And your body was not yet marked by life
When your skin was a blank canvas 
And neither loss nor grief had yet inked their
Poems of regret on you
Do you remember when you were bright and new
And life, and life had not yet carved its
Loving alphabet
On you?
—Alberto Moreno.

Alberto’s poem reminded me of the conclusion of Paradise Lost. I can no longer quote it from memory, so while Sue browsed, I searched for Milton so I could read those lines to her and was surprised how hard it was to find him. He is not in “Literature,” but over in a cobwebby corner called “Classics” where he reposes dustily between Euripides and Shakespeare. I suppose there aren't many English majors hanging out in Powell's these days.

Sue treated us to a coffee and I read her the section I’d been trying to remember while we waited for my car.