SPRING

An Exchange of Gifts

As long as you read this poem
I will be writing it.
I am writing it here and now
before your eye,
although you can't see me.
Perhaps you'll dismiss this as a verbal trick,
the joke is you're wrong;
the real trick
is your pretending
this is something
fixed and solid,
external to us both.
I tell you better:
I will keep on
writing this poem for you
even after I'm dead.

ALDEN NOWLAN

MAYBE I'M AMAZED