Ted Kooser Eating Cake

He sat down at a table with a small
piece of cake and started signing books.
Whenever he was left alone for a moment
he ate slowly at his cake with slow,
even clumsy, stabs. I wanted
to talk to him, about his poems,
his paintings, and art. I was armed
with relevent stories about all of these.
But something about the way he ate,
with certainty of purpose, caused me
to pause the way you would to interrupt
a person reading or a dentist drilling.
His cake was an hour-glass, when it ran out
he would stand up and ask for his ride home.
And he did. I let him take three of those
bites and went home with my book
unsigned, leaving him with nothing
to remember me by.