REGRETS................................................................................................................................................................WES WARD

Regrets

Poem by Wes Ward

When we didn’t move to Philadelphia, we didn’t buy the hanging flower basket for the front stoop in Old City. We didn’t ride bicycles to the market and fill your basket with Roma tomatoes and eggplant. You don’t like eggplant. And you thought Philadelphia would lose its lure if we had a mailbox, a sconce in the foyer, stairs that creaked. We kept our distance and bought a dog in a small town beside railroad tracks that haven’t railed trains in forty years. It’s quiet beneath these stars. And tonight on our walk, when you asked if I had any regrets, I had already begun writing a poem about hanging baskets and a love that follows us wherever we have and haven’t lived.