Poem: Generation Gap

Generation Gap

A generation ago, the Hyatt was a house.
Instead of twenty feet of surrounding glass
I could have touched the ceiling without jumping;
no hormone-charged roses here, no bowers
of gold, no waterfalls, not even a petal-lined carpet;
I imagine popping the plastic canister of film open
with my thumb, sliding it into the slot of the camera
and seeing this shot: the vows, words like wisps
like magic, the light of the eyes, the intensity
of gaze, the brush of finger on finger,
the freedom and dissolution of reservation
that penetrates the pulsations of time,
and would have, even if in the moment,
my fingers numb, I never took that photograph.