Lunch

I meet her once a month

in her housing project lobby.

We do lunch.

We trudge, her cane tapping,

my palm on her trembling elbow,

to the corner luncheonette,

I watch her take small bird bites

out of overstuffed platters as she repeatedly

rearranges sugar, ketchup, salt and pepper,

while telling and retelling neatly looped stories

about my dead mother, their shared girlhood,

the farm in the Berkshires, the beach at Coney Island

as though there were no now,

just then, and my mother, long dead,

my mother, still protecting her, my mother

still offering a place to belong, a tribe, comfort,

as this fragile old lady, sipping dishwater coffee,

offers me this ancient map,

and I offer her brief respite from

whatever is just ahead.

 Changing Perspective

Without the language

of the wilderness, I fear

isolated unmarked trails.

Those climbing, hiking,

or riding the rapids are carried by that

splendid feeling of immortality I once knew.

Inside between other gray-haired visitors

I watch the looped film on history and geology,

then pause to study ants clustered

near the pit toilet, laboriously

carrying out some Sisyphean task,

reminding me of how challenging

the smallest of worlds becomes in time.

Now, eating cheese sandwiches

that melted in the hot car,

I suspect that we may appear

to have lost our passion

to become one with nature.

When in fact, we have finally

mastered the art of being exactly

as intimate as we choose to be.

 Bio:

Anita Pulier practiced law in New York and New Jersey for thirty years and was happy to trade legal writing for poetry when she retired several years ago. Anita is currently the representative at the United Nations for the US section of the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom