by Tim Suermondt

 

I’ll take, always, a gander

at the beautiful: this time

at the long black hair,

 

the short black skirt,

the razor thin pantyhose

and the black high heels.

 

She’s easing my way through

the monotonous landscape

of upper New York, leavened

 

only by the Subway shop

with it’s reasonably priced

array of foot long sandwiches.

 

I notice “The First Circle”

on the cover—Solzhenitsyn, that

grouch, would have loved this

 

and wished he’d been exiled

to the Indian Continent instead

of to the Winter snows, the Summer

 

mosquitoes of  a lonely Vermont.

At the Buffalo Airport stop

she grabs all her belongings, hawk-like,

 

and dashes off the blue bus.

I watch her wobble a bit,

but continue on at a spirited pace.

 

I unwrap the rest of my sandwich,

being as careful as if opening a great

book, eating slowly to make it last.