Moleskine Sunday

6:42 p.m.

I check out a book by William Carlos Williams 

(and the man ahead of me in the check out line,

bless whoever invented suit pants) and wonder

if Williams knew his name would be famous one

day, or at least unobscure enough for a transplant

from way north of here to remember its sound

and long for it. 

6:58 p.m.

I ride the elevator down seven floors and think

of every possible scenario involving the cable

and my untimely death in the two minutes and

twenty-seven seconds it talkes to reach rock bottom.

The creaky old box sways but someone actually 

runs to get inside as the doors close with my exit.

I almost vomit. 

7:04 p.m. 

I scribble in the margins of a forty year old book and

become adept at watching fit men stretch out of the

corner of my eyes. We’re all human somehow. So much

for poetry being the last bastion of the learned.