From three thousand miles

Words strike hard
as I rip envelopes open
glancing only briefly at contents before
tearing wide the next.
No happy news – just cries
that life
bites hard into ankles.

Jimbo is experiencing what he calls
culture shock:
like malaria, not painful but all consuming.
He window shops in Norfolk
at the Dillard's of Life.
‘Lizbeth doesn’t even window shop;
she is stagnate, her writing flat.
From three thousand miles
she has lost her shine. And Anne
sends a sensuous card titled
Sax Fantasy. She wonders
why people change.

Snow falls through the
orange of street lights.
I kill flakes by
breathing skyward.
I yell
Be!
and feel a nibbling at my ankles.

Teddy is a living poet.
He doesn’t write letters.

I am huddled in a corner.
Relax! Teddy cries.
He wears red sneakers:

No nibbling there.


Copyright 1983-2003 by Peter A. Stinson.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry 360 with permission of the author.