The Fifth One Ended Up in France


-inspired by Harris Burdick’s drawing left w/Wenders



She sat there with her coffee

Incredulous it seemed (to me)

re: the abduction, the beheading

the explosion down in the wadi.

Her elderly husband

nodded to sleep near

a Hindu yonder.

How would it be if I spoke

about the angels and epiphanies,

the series of dreams?

How bourgeois to come all the way

to Paris and be fearful

of using a password

on the internet:

dressed in the requisite blacks

and whites that are expected

of Americans in Paris

-so as to avoid detection

amid the fashionable French.

There, as I observed

a young man dashing to and fro

each freshly abandoned larder

to pay his rent in some

run-down Parisian

haunt, tapping out hope

in case-sensitive detail,

rubbing his hands each time,

a bit Dickens, a bit Faust.

Her poor dog it seemed

would be all alone until ten

in Boca

because of the delays

and that’s all that matters

to someone, somewhere.