PARIS POSTCARD

How to explain the quotidian?

The richness of the not extraordinary

self being in the world.

Every day extra croissants

with coffee, newspapers in two tongues,

an attic room with dark-chocolate

beams at the city’s forehead

looking out

on spires, sycamores, tourist crowds,

suburban hives of the immigrant forgotten.

Shops disappoint, but every day

another church, long-storied windows,

a café called Flowers

where we daily eat our salads

and colonize the river.

What to report of life so routine?

This face is the one I live in,

this body drinking in

snifters and fluted glass.

My blood becomes—how to say it?—

a spectre of this room, this comfortable isle

where we unpack ourselves of

hangings back home.

Any city afar can render

this service, rolling countryside

with stone tiled houses,

yet this is our soul, our mind

as long as we wake here, eat and take

our daily walks.  Let me

just say we wish you

could grace the adjoining room

and the conversation could

dance like these lucent lace curtains

on a glorious June afternoon

when nothing but ourselves ever

happens and time bends

around the corner awnings,

sun chooses to linger

and we can’t

decide what is real

and never will