Paul Hostovsky

a poem

**

The One


He had chosen badly.
He had been distracted
by beauty. Looking
beauty up all those years
in the dictionary,
Webster’s Seventh,
Eighth, Eleventh, his
thumbs digging into the gilded
thumb indices, opening
beauty up to know
beauty. But now
he was twice divorced
and nearly fifty.
He still had his dictionary
and he still had his thumbs
which was more than most
of the animals could say,
but he wasn’t looking
for beauty now. He was looking
for the One. Beauty
was in the whorl
of the One. He understood this
the way you understand a word
you’ve been reading in books
your whole life
but never had the occasion
to use. He had never had
the occasion. Now he
looked into women’s eyes
like a man with a word
on the tip of his tongue.
And so they offered him
their handkerchiefs.
Or they offered him
a glass of water, or a chair.
But he wanted a whorl.
We wanted a word.
He would know it when
he said it.

**

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Paul Hostovsky's poems appear in FRiGG, Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah and others. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer's Almanac. He has two recent poetry chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson Books) and Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press). Check out his website at www.paulhostovsky.com