Thirty-Two Miles Poem by Caroline Misner

Thirty-two miles left to go;
a chill wheezing, damp and fragile,
into the morning fog that flanks
the phantom pines like crooked fingers
piercing the saggy low hanging clouds,
each tip poking the mist suspended
over the gravel road.

I met a man there once, not very long ago,
and he was just like you. Last summer
in this place of emerald pastures full
of galloping horses, finally unfettered
and free to run because the riding season
was over and the misty hills paled.

And how I loved to sit and listen
to him, like I used to listen to you,
and your rhetoric. He even looked
like you, stocky but lean,
and shrouding his insecurities behind
a veil of bravado.
He talked with a passion as though
he knew what he was talking about.

Just like you used to do, especially
on rainy afternoons when we should have
been in class, but instead stayed
in your rented room and made love
on rented sheets, and made your electric blanket
sing; our bodies pressed in passion,
pressing down those weathered sheets.

But I never touched him, no,
not even once, though I yearned to
until the desire smoldered into agony
flaring like the horses’ breath in the meadow.
Nothing I ever did seemed right to you,
and like you he turned away
without ever really knowing me.