Flame, The

Iowa Review, Fall 2008 by Ray, David

for Etheridge

I once wandered into a second hand bookshop

and came across a slim volume of my poems,

then took it into a bar and sat over a beer.

Some of the poems were not so bad, although

I would rewrite a few if I could reclaim magical

or not so magical moments that inspired them.

But I was hardly my ideal reader-not like the one

my friend Etheridge Knight encountered one night

in Kansas City. He and I wandered into a tavern

called The Flame, and in the dim rosy light sat

next to a young woman who was reading a book.

After a few minutes Etheridge asked her what she

was reading, and she held up a copy of Belly Song,

and he informed her that he happened to be its author.

"Perfect," he told me later. "Now I can die happy."

DAVID RAY has written many books of poetry, most recently Music of Time: Selected and New Poems; When; and After Tagore. He lives in Tucson with poet and essayist Judy Ray and a dog called Levi, who gives him a walk twice a day.