A Chance Meeting
Shane Allison

Walking home from a poetry reading one night
It began to rain. I popped the collar
Of my leather jacket up around my neck
As if it would be enough to keep me dry.
I lived in a beat-up apartment
On Grove Street. It wasn’t five star,
But was in the village,
Blocks away from the bars
And boyfriend material.
I slept in my room with a butcher knife
Due to the mouse under the stove.
As I walked to dodge pellets of wet,
A man in a chef coat
Sauntered up next to me,
Sheltering us under his umbrella.
These things don’t happen
In my city-town of Tallahassee.
He had to be heaven sent.
We exchanged names as if they
Were phone numbers
Written on receipt slips.
He worked at a restaurant
Whose food I couldn’t afford
On a work-study salary.
I told him I was a poet
Who exchanged freshly squeezed
Sunshine for Lady Liberty.
Our walk stopped in front of Andy’s Deli
Where I would go for chicken sandwiches
And coconut crunch donut delites.
When he pulled the umbrella away,
I could taste the rain on my lips again,
Beads of it sticking to the frames of my glasses.
The face of this angel no longer in focus.
He had a train to Brooklyn to catch,
And I had a kitchen mouse to kill.

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