Approaching Paris
Beneath the rain
The blue-gray glum
No river Seine
No Arc de Triomphe
Only empty countryside
A fallow field
A horse-hitched cart
A narrow red-dirt road
How am I to recognize
This terrain
As France? On the tarmac
Diesel fuel
A bus of darting eyes
Slimy fish pressed into tin
Later, bags and boxes
Belched from metal mouths
On the street, Moroccans
Whistle from their cabs
Another bus, a Metro train
Every ad in French
How am I to recognize
The evil from the good?
That blind man begging
That woman in a hood
2River View, 2009
