We think we know each other. We all do.
We chat in the wind, as though all it took
was pleasantries. I noticed things, the clothes
he wore, the words he used, the careful eyes.
But now I hear that other things were true,
that the world called, and that he kept a book
when young. Again I see that no one knows
another's way, no matter how he tries.

Airman, actor, dancer. The man I knew
walked dogs and waited with me for the mail,
talked of the rain, the puddles on his home.
We kept inside the old, we shunned the new,
we couldn't pass because we mustn't fail.
I kept my peace, he never saw a poem.

About the poet: Daniel J. Langton's work has appeared in Poetry, the Paris Review, the Atlantic Monthly, the TLS, the Harvard Advocate and similar journals. His Querencia won the Devins Award and the London Prize; among his other collections is Life Forms.