Our beckoning cabby
from Tunisia,
snaked through preposterous traffic,
past the icy neon signs
and the greening fragrance of stacked Christmas pines,

to the Met
where I almost cried, nearly blind
from Van Gogh’s iris and his cypress,
Henri’s vase of asters, Degas dancers,
until I and other spent patrons roosted
like pigeons on a rare bench.

Outside the cafe windows,
beneath the twisted trees,
hooded minks walked their dogs in pairs,
West Highland White terriers
in candy quilted coats,
as we inhaled the blackness of our coffee
and gazed the sifting snow.

Julie is from St. Louis and moved to Titusville, Florida in 1964 because her father worked on the space program. She has lived in Richmond, VA since 1975 and is now retired after having paid her debt to society by working over thirty years in IT. She has had poetry and flash fiction published online and in print in Bacopa, Parentheses, Unmasked Anthology, and in Shanghai Literary Review.