Forgive me
for not greeting
you on the train
this morning
but you were
immersed
in your book
as I wished
to be in mine.
Besides, it was
too early for speech —
too early for your
name even.
If I had said
“Hello…._____?”
we both would have
felt compelled
to speak (the clatter,
the jerk and sway
of the train, our hands
tightening on the pole
as we struggle
to stay on our feet).
Kelly Vande Plasse is a former editor of The New York Quarterly. Kelly earned her M.Arch. from the University of Michigan and, afterward, studied poetry with NYQ Founder, William Packard, at NYU and The New School.
Kelly has spent the past thirty years working in healthcare design and construction. Her poems have received awards from The Hippocrates Society for Poetry and Medicine, the Atlanta Review, and the Paterson Literary Review. Her manuscript, Milking the Scorpion, was awarded second place in the Red Mountain Discovery Awards, and was a finalist for the Backwaters Prize. Kelly's work has also appeared in the New York Quarterly, the Belleview Literary Review, the Naugatuck River Review, and The Louisiana Review... Full Profile
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