There's a Song about a Blue Moon

& it's how I saw her, Sue Bruce, standingalone, although in the song it's the moonthat sees the singer, but in this poem it's

definitely Sue Bruce in the cloakroomof St. Luke's Lutheran Church. Her smile, hereyes, Mediterranean blue, her blond

hair turned under—a Prince Valiant cutI think they called it—to kiss the PeterPan collar of her starched white blouse, I liked

it all, even her jaw line that appeared,arguably, a tad heavy for atrue knockout, but then we need only think

of Grace Kelly, her lanky presence inTo Catch a Thief, who did very well forherself & caught a prince, the jaw line

notwithstanding, & it's what I did, thinkof Kelly, because I'd recently seenher & it, the movie, at the RKO

Orpheum with Jimmy Ray Smith one bone-coldSaturday when our scruffy rivertown, as if founded to sink the spirits

of a sensitive kid like Jim, seemed toexist at the farthest possible removefrom life as lived by Grace & Cary Grant

on the Cote d'Azur. What happened in allthe years since to Sue, Jim, me? Eventually,most everything. Or not so much. It all

depends. I was twelve as I watched her hangup her coat. "Hi! I'm Sue Bruce," she said, thisgirl who first did it for me. One look &

a voice in my head said "Girls" in a wholenew way. Now I'm an older gentlemanas the Kwik-Mart clerk last evening confirmed.

"You see to that customer," she told herco-worker. "I'll help the older gentleman."It's true, some days I could use a little

help & some day I'll have to come down likethe tree in our neighbor's yard. At dawn A.& I woke to "Buzz" Wilkins & his crew.

By nine the blue spruce was gone.

for Joe Kraus