Today I met a poet on the train

Today I met a poet on the train.
He wrote nothing down,
Simply opening to a well-agonised page
Awash with corrections, black and blue.
He looked at me with gentle phrases,
Dancing around the corners of his fatherly ears —
Such a smile he had!
I should not be afraid to confide my non-linear anxieties,
And trace the dialogue of his edits.

Anonymous poet with your pen untouched,
Did you mean to show off?
Oh kindred spirit, must you too be seen?
"Magazines," you said.
Perhaps it was one,
Perhaps obscure to abstraction.
But perhaps it does not matter.
For you and I have shared a hopeful communion,
A faith in viable words
And rhythmic metered attitudes,
Traded without reading a word.
After all, what do they matter, if one is
Understood without.