Tomorrow I will
sit outside a café in Paris
and drink coffee and read the paper
and watch stick figures in their haute
couture.
That is what I am expected to do.
I will wander through the mostly empty
rooms
of a museum and stare at brazen brushstrokes
dead for a hundred years or more
while pretending that I have great insight
into color and form.
That is what I am expected to do.
I will sleep with a mysterious stranger
named Collette,
the sun pouring through the open window
to wash our bodies clean of the encounter
before we rise and take to the street
to move the clock forward an hour or two,
for that is what we are expected to do.
After a glass of wine and a baguette,
I shall take a long nap in the sagging bed
in the top room of the house of yellow
stucco
while bicycles in the street below ring
their bells.
That is what I am expected to do.
In the evening I will rise from my body
and float down streets into the bouquet of
lights
that is Paris when romance and leisure
summon the night,
for that is what I am expected to do.
When I awaken in the morning from this cockeyed
dream,
I will call you Collette and buy two
tickets to France,
for I am certain that this is what you
expect me to do.
~William Hammett
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