Evelyn

Pete Mladinic

“Portrait de jeune fille à la blouse bleue.” Amedeo Modigliani. (.c 1910)

Do you have a key word in your life?
Is it Evelyn, because your spouse is named
Evelyn?  Is it love, is it God, or faith? 

Until recently I never had a key word. Mine
is time. For someone else “be” is the word,
not a word, the word: to be or not to be, 

not a question, the question. River, fire,
snow, limestone.  Any word could be a key
word, it’s all up to the person, the individual. 

As I said, up till recently I didn’t have one.
Mine’s time. Someone else’s might be life,
or eternity or silence.  The library was big, 

bright and silent, the Sunday morning I
walked out of the library, and on the bridge
met Evelyn.  It was January and very cold. 

In an enclosure she wrote her phone number
on a piece of paper. She wore a dark blue
parka with a fur-lined hood.  Nineteen then 

now seventy. We lived close to that bridge
then, now we don’t.  Now we live closer
to each other than a decade ago. Time, 

last I saw her face to face a July afternoon
on a sidewalk above a freeway.  Not at all
quiet, not terribly hot, not sweltering.  

That morning on the bridge was freezing.
In the enclosure I got a good look at her
face and she handed me a piece of paper 

with her number on it. She pulled back
the fur-lined hood, to reveal very dark
brown hair, strands in little wavy curls  

above her forehead. She was walking
toward the library I’d just left. We met
on the bridge and ducked into the enclosure 

a bright cold quiet Sunday morning, very
cold, freezing. Were there no enclosure
there may have been no phone number  

on a piece of paper, no five year
rollercoaster romance, no Evelyn. Time’s
my word, not love, not God. “Time 

has come today,” a winter Sunday morning
Evelyn. One could say the key word is life.

Peter Mladinic’s fourth book of poems, Knives on a Table, is available from Better Than Starbucks Publications. An animal rights advocate, he lives in Hobbs, New Mexico.