A French damsel and I decided to take a train

To New York to see the Gates and be at play.

You were late to the Dinky and had to book

It to meet me by the stop to pause, smoke, and spring

Off the platform—covered in Bohemian clothes, your petite frame

We set off to see the artistic, monumental wrapping.

I gave you a present without wrapping

It as I tried to fix my eyes to train

Comprehension to your reaction, your visage in my vision’s frame

You whisper that we should go to the theater to see a play

But I retort to wait until a temperate evening in spring

You finger the present, the Micawber token, a used, yellowed book.

You pout your lips and look cute, so I agree to book

The tickets for the theater as men stand rapping

On street corners, with voices and legs that spring

Into such wild vibrations of motion that I lose my train

Of thought, and I joke about needing play,

And I blame the sterile academia; it is with guilt, I frame

You. To look, surrounded by this orange fabric, at your svelte frame

Makes me feel as though in a fantastical book

And I believe that even if I mellifluously play

Any instrument, sing any chord, and on dulcet objects start gently rapping,

I could never emulate your theatrically lovely strain,

Such a breed of actresses deep in watery depths in a refreshing, thespian flowing spring.

And in the Ritz that afternoon you are like an elastic spring

In your resilience to hide your emotions like a stoic picture in frame

As you sip tea and nibble cucumber sandwiches, you train

Your technique to obscure, to hide, to be anything but an open book.

I sit with merlot and start tapping, on the window rapping

At the flowing saffron Gates, ambiguous in shape like hidden facial play.

You act and act deceitfully in the Concierge Level, so I will decide to call the play

For the evening with scone in mouth when your surreptitious hiding springs

Forth when I stop sophistication and start hardcore rapping.

I exchange merlot for rhymes to show my disoriented frame

Of mind. I act the part of spoken poetry and put away the book

I am enamored with your French acting, gently rocking like a train.

And the night before all this, instead wrapping play collections old and yellowed for you

I decided against when soon the train (spring will come!) can take us to the theater

As we wear masks and frame book shelves in this fiction that covers all in orange.