Day in the Life of Poetry (a Sketch)

finished a long day of work clicking
through the Buffalo Poetics List
for 20 minutes then walked out the front door
toward the corner
of 5th and I St. to get to the mall
and check the local Doubleday
bookstore for a copy of
The Best of American Poetry 2004 ed. by
Lyn Hejinian where favorite poet/bloggers
are published
the book proves to be at least as exciting as
The Best of American Poetry 2002 ed. by Robert Creeley
and getting to the streetlight
of the intersection right when it turns from yellow to red

is a SUV moving at about 50 mph
to the cross-traffic and I know I feel it
the SUV is gonna smash into that 70s era Toyota
I see it happening the Toyota is gonna spin
hitting the cars in the parellell lane
it will be bad some one(s) will die
others will be changed for life
my adrenaline gland is pumping
I hear a woman screaming
from another car that has already stopped at the red light

but the SUV has antilock brakes
there isn't a sound
it stops inches short of the Toyota
scares the hell out of its driver
the woman's screams become laughter
in relief she is laughing so hard
that when I get to the bookstore
I find on the poetry shelf
Involuntary Vision: After Akira Kurosawa's Dreams
ed. by Michael Cross quite a find
for a mall bookstore
and why the hell not
indeed the book is beside me now
for who is Julia Bloch
her poems in the book
are totally fucking astonishing
finding them were matters of luck