On Deciding Not to Travel

From the window of the fourth- floor walk-up, the umbrellas slid past each other with assembly-line perfection, black & blue mingling with the occasional red, yellow, lime-green. The street shone like a mirror that gives nothing back. The hiss of tires. This short loop keeps playing in my head as I watch the cloud lift & a white moth, caught out after daybreak, yawing & veering against a backdrop of dripping trees. This summer won’t come again. Why spend it en route to somewhere else? I pluck a snail from the deep grass & place it on my palm. It makes a slow circuit on its single foot.