Naturally, since I’m going to Paris for the first time in more than ten years soon, I’ve been thinking about my last trip there. And digging through stuff that’s buried in my computer. Here’s something I wrote back then.

CULTURE LESSON

Surfing channels in
Paris I
see a woman on TV
in bed pausing
from her book carefully

marking her place
with a flowered strip of paper she
smiles her nurse comes
to assist her
an upright metal pole on wheels

following behind her.
The sound happens
to be turned off. Later
her husband greets her in the
kitchen also smiling she is

fully dressed now
like a white lily freshly drawn
from the porcelain vase
at her bedside.
He drops tea

into a pot and readies
the boiling water.
Even without sound it’s clear
this is a happy French
existence.

April-May 2001