The Day Before They Declared War


   In a small restaurant called Aladdin’s,
   I sat alone at a table between
                         corner windows and looked down on
   the canal’s frozen water basking in direct
   sunlight–  its slow melt
              trickled into thin silver streaks that
   puddled at the foot of
   a rock where a hundred webbed
   footprints walked around and
   around and around  . . .

                            Are you ready? He asked,
                          Do you know what you want?
 


 
M.J.Iuppa
(c) M.J. Iuppa, 2006