Respect

You Were There

You were there

right where

I needed you

to be

instead of pretty

in an oil by Robert Henri,

or a verse

in a love song

by Lennon and McCartney.

Off drawing

every bee

in a field of honeysuckle

to sweeten

Eudora Welty’s tea,

or lovely on a cameo

riding Aretha’s

swelling breast

when she sang

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

You weren’t

the taste of asparagus

lingering on the tongue

of the Queen

early spring, or the spring

in the step of Ben Vereen. 

You were there,

right where

I needed you

to be

though you could easily

have been somewhere else.