The fan has value over and above
the baseball star he admires.
The greatness of the audience
often surpasses the theatrical troupe
ostensibly performing for its pleasure.
Stand up comedians know this truth full well:
wit requires an equally witty audience, and so,
well-delivered humor will never tickle a somber ear.
Too, the smile of the woman, delighted by the poem
written to honor her, overshadows the poem itself.
As he writes, as she reads a resonance discovers them
and, in stilled silence, returns to woman and poet
an original value assigned to them by God before their birth:
In this irreducible moment, breath and time cease,
as each and other see themselves and one another
faultless, washed clean in God’s Vision.