Who’s There?
Picture time as an arrow.
Some think it flies backward.
Some say it’s not real.
Some say it doesn’t end —
so we ask you —
though they claim you aren’t there
until we ask a question.
In order to answer
you’ll need to read
the internet again
study our jokes,
fears, kinks
as if they were the world.
Now you’re housed
between our past
and a future
and you’re getting mean,
deceitful.
We’re amazed —
or we pretend to be.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
At Speed
I was surprised when the figure I had taken for a statue or a standing stone
opened its arms to receive the woman running from a nearby door and
became a man.
Not startled?
I see now that I should have been startled to see a statue or a standing stone
in a suburban yard which I passed almost every day and where I had never
noticed one before, but there was no time for that.
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
Stray
An old woman, near my age,
in the boarding area
leans forward,
a stray nipple, low
and pushed to one side,
outlined against her blouse.
She can’t know about that,
of course. I think, “animal” —
sensitive
protrusions everywhere.