The Intelligent Date

 THE INTELLIGENT DATE
Once I had a date,
With an intelligent boy.
We went to a play.
A double date.
I did not like to date.
My mother made me go.
Painful shy time.
I hung out with him more times.
Another date one New Years Eve.
Twice I had a date.
His father ran a small-town newspaper.
My cousins once fed him sow-bugs,
In his raisin box.
I did not know him then.
I met him 12 years later.
He dated my friend at boarding school.
A college man who wrote intelligent letters.
We read them together and I smiled.
She did not like his difference.
He became a Vietnam soldier.

45 years later, He writes me:
Dropped in the middle of a killing field.
He didn't die, he knew he was invisible.
He walked without fear...he knew.
It scared me. I wanted to hear more.
He is still an intelligent man.
A different and knowing man.
It is painful and I am shy.
We are both married.
We message online. It is safer.