Driving along Elm Street in Greensboro, NC past Fisher Park,
I hear the old song The Love I Lost on the radio by Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes.
I sigh and think of lost loves and missed opportunities with desirable women.
I think about lost loves for a moment then forget about them.
Instead I wonder what might have been with the missed opportunities,
like when I was a teenager and that pretty girl kept gawking at me
next to our high school as she stood with other girls in front of the little store.
I smiled and asked her what was wrong because of the way she stared at me.
She said, “Nothing,” and I was too dense to see that she was into me,
and I wonder what would have happened if I’d been more aware
of what she was thinking and if we’d gone out together.
Would she have been the one I’d have nuptial bliss with one day?
Would she have been the one I would have been with forever?
In retrospect, I wish I had reacted to her with romantic intentions,
asked her out, brought her flowers, eventually declared my love for her,
gotten married to her in a little church, maybe in the country,
and loved her and cared for her for the rest of my life and been with her now.
Bob Boyd
