top of page

La Baguette

 

1.

 

Narrow streets converge at a corner

where food merchants are plying their trade;

a hubbub in the stillness of a postcard depiction.

A woman had then sashayed on by

on Rue Dauphine

as only French women can.

Who has directed her diagonal cut

across this Parisian street? Buñuel?

 

Hip thrust forward, la vie d’amour

implicit in the every step,

her dress on this sultry day clinging;

her hand encircling an unbagged baguette

long and lean and lancing the air

a master stroke in alliteration.

A man stands transfixed in speculation.

With whom would she share it?

Taste it? Tear it?

Leaving specks of crust on pouty lips

the soft dough filling her mouth?

​

2.

 

He crosses Pont Neuf,  a bridge built in halves

becoming enjoined after twenty six years.

Not long a span of time for stone

but a good-size chunk of a marital life.

That cliched better half lies languid in a room

of long-stemmed walls and painted roses

time having passed in beige.

 

She notes as he enters,

his trench coat twistingly belted;

a would-be Bogart in that parting scene.

Autumn winds on this ashen day,

have had their way with his desperate hair

resulting in enchanting disarray.

Eyes turn to the baguette he has brought unexpected.

She gives him a smile as long as the Seine.

Subtitles follow in the space beneath them.

Existential Triptych

2. My Dinner With Stanislavski

​

He speaks of a theater that could go under.

As he mulls an existence without costumes nor props.

Thank Godot for the vodka to come.

​

But what's to become of our inner life?

The regurgitation of pea-soup monologues?

Where would we stage-strutters go

​

In that allotted hour? He remains silent.

I now sense a memory of reason

Why so much sweat upon the pages;

 

So many pages in a play with no plot.

Therein might lie the madness to the method.

As shown in the tedium of Chekhov's Vanya—

​

That final scene shattered by gunshots,

"Take me away! Take me away! Kill me.

I can't stay here, I can't!"

​

. 

​

3. The Barn

​

The barn doors not left open—

thus nothing has run off

 

​not the steeds of misdeeds

that should have been released

 

​along with the demons we meant to unleash

and maudlin memories still sitting baled

 

from the winters of discontent

the squandered summers that came and went

 

​the beast within that should have

long been unburdened

 

​chewing on unsown oats

behind closed doors.

​

​

​

1. Side Table

 

Ingrained in old furniture
is where the true stories lie.

That bureau that sits in storage in Jersey

from the last cross-country move,
outlasted the starter marriage
and the one the length

of War and Peace that would follow.

 

But most of all, I await the return
of that little side table now being repainted
by a handyman to match

the new décor in this,

the latest of multiple lives.

 

It has heard the arguments
absorbed the resentments
weathered the storms.
Coming back in a semi-gloss black,
I’ve lost count of the coats of colors

it previously has worn.

 

First bequeathed in its natural grain

by a wrinkled woman from Eastern Europe 

who never got over the drowning of a son
who looked like a young Cary Grant. 
This after losing kin in the holocaust.

 

This latest reincarnation,

will now hold a Crate & Barrel vase
and will remain standing

long after we’ve departed.

Existential Tryptych_edited.jpg
Muse in circle_edited_edited_edited.png
bottom of page