The Woman at the Next Table

He doesn't stare for fear of being rude,
though toward that perfect face his glances tend.
He feeds the eye and tries not to offend,
while waiters intervene with trays of food.
But in the click of tableware, his mood
becomes more strained than he can comprehend,
for eating puts his hunger to an end
and surfeit makes the memory seem crude.

By longing too intently for a thing,
it pales beside his fierce desiring
and makes him doubt both beauty and the eye,
and he wonders whether Homer, being blind,
was laughing at a world too inclined
to rise from feasts for beauty's sake and die.

Copyright © 2003 Robert Hudson All rights reserved
from The Formalist
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission