Billy Collins: Imperial Garden

It was at the end of dinner,
the two of us in a red booth
maintaining our silence,
when I decided to compose a message
for the fortune cookie you were soon to receive.

Avoid mulishness when choosing
a position on the great board game of life

was my mean-spirited contribution
to the treasury of Confucian wisdom.

But while we waited for the cookies,
the slices of oranges,
and the inescapable pot of watery tea,
I realized that by mulishness
I meant your refusal to let me
have my own way every time I wanted it.

I watched you looking off to the side-
your mass of dark hair,
your profile softened by lamplight
and then I made up a fortune for myself.

He who acts like a jerk
on an island of his own creation
will have only the horizon for a friend.

I seemed to be getting worse at this,
I thought, as the cookies arrived at the table
along with the orange slices
and a teapot painted with tigers
menacingly peering out from the undergrowth.

The restaurant was quiet then.
The waiter returned to looking out at the street,
a zither whimpered in the background,

and we turned to our cookies,
cracking the brittle shells,
then rolling into little balls
the tine scrolls of our destinies
before dropping them, unread, into our cups of tea-
a little good-luck thing we'd been doing ever since we met.