Romantic

By Johnmichael Simon

Mister J.P. Hornbill, ninety fast approaching,
reading glasses unreliable as foglamps blinking,
has taken to watching movies from some wondrously
benevolent provider of purloined celluloid, streaming
down to his rusting yet still functioning computer

And like the zipped-up overcoated teenage dreamer
he never has relinquished, chooses Romance as his
favorite genre and watches, eyes misting up his specs,
how in script after metropolitan script, the camera focuses
on yet another pair of star-crossed strangers

Young and good looking, bumping unexpectedly, yet
also quite predictably, into each other, locking eyes
for a short magnetic moment, exchanging a word or two
on this or that, and having kindled in us a spark

That Mister J.P. Hornbill (like hundreds of other
lonely viewers) hopes, fondly imagines, nay is certain,
will within the next two hours become a flame, consuming
time and space, surviving improbable adventures,
partings and re-meetings, losses, tragedies and with
a quite implausible belief in destiny, burn on to help them

find each other once more in scene after scene then part
again, until the final minutes and that inevitable, arms around
each other, lips and tongues entwined, ecstatic moment,
after which the actors' names and all the other collaborators
in this great pretense appear in black and white across the screen

Mister J.P. Hornbill takes off his glasses, wipes his eyes,
prepares for bed. Somewhere, in a dream perhaps, he knows
he'll meet her. Maybe she's not far away now, closing her
computer, brushing her teeth, filling her hot water bottle.
Possibly they'll meet soon he thinks, sit in the back row
munching popcorn look at each other sideways, smile
and exchange a word or two, as strangers sometimes do