she lit a burner on the stove and offered me a pipe
"i thought you'd never say hello," she said
"you look like the silent type."
then she opened up a book of poems
and handed it to me
written by an Italian poet
from the thirteenth century
and every one of them words rang true
and glowed like burnin' coal
pourin' off of every page
like it was written in my soul from me to you