First Crush (For Vanessa, Wherever She May Be....) Poem by Frank Bana

The desk on which I wrote first poems
Six-liners, desperately in love
The LPs carried down the street
In case we met, I might impress

Her with my fresh scrubbed face
I wished for glasses much less thick
And hair more so, and darker yet
Waiting for Saturday to come

Imagining with whom she'd leave
The taste of Kiddush on her tongue
For some smoky mysterious pub
Or movie house, or music club

She seemed so self-possessed!
Was she? Her poem said
Sometimes I wish I didn't see.
Living would be so easy.

Her perfect face, perfect to me
Swelled bosom, page-boy hair
Soft eyes, why did she wish
For blindness nonetheless?

Not a single kiss, in truth
Not even one caress! Just one
Slow dance in the shul:
So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright -

I still know every note.
And then she rode off for the night
And for the rest of time
She vanished in the world upon

Whose surface, in whose face
I would never find her trace
My friends, laugh all you can
I wonder if she made it through

And thought of me again.
I seek her still, so that we may
Compare our poems, our notes of grace,
And all the people we became.