I am told that tights aren't pants, but the girl

I am told that tights aren't pants, but the girl

at the next table over looks thoughtful to me

in style. She purses her beautiful lips

like petals: a red just this sweet side

of pink, of the sort one imagines appeals

to bees -- as if, like us, they bother

with the colors of what they drink. And skin

the proverbial cream. She is also wearing

what seems to be a new man's button-down:

a pale, morning-glory blue (or morning-after?),

shades lighter than the darker blue of her eyes

(cornflower); the sleeves, pushed up, slip down

the length of her arms, like water down off-white

stems; and the collar, folded open, shows just

enough throat to signal her defiance of the winter.

(She quickly removed her coat.) Her style

belongs to the spring. I am, meanwhile,

torn between thinking these sorts of things

and noticing that, when she eats, and I 

have seen this, now, many times, she almost

invariably manages to slime in tendrils

of her own hair, not very long -- it is naturally

salsify blonde -- in with bites of sandwich,

and then spends time extracting the hair

with pesto'd fingers and cleaning it of masticated

food and her own saliva; the ends

are now tinted green. I am counting the bites.

This is a good deal less appealing than pants that are tights.

(Composed 12 February 2012, on the first cold day of a winter that has been unusually warm and dry, such that certain things have been unseasonably in bloom.)