route change

a.

on to Pasqual’s for polenta,
something not on M.’s diet.
I ate knowing,
but she abstained.

i mentioned it Wednesday,
said i’d go Friday,
she said polenta is Thursday.
how’d she remember? i ate. it was good.

b.

opposite the restaurant is the building
where Samuel Morris lived around 1831,
eleven months. long enough to earn a
marble plaque on the exterior wall

that plaque says he invented
the electric telegraph magnetic writer.
which means, with different words,
about the same thing in English,

c.
then boarded the small electric bus
and rode into a student demonstration
with traffic stammering, then blocked.
we gyrated around as best we could, the driver did.

having just eaten and
had a few glasses of wine to boot,
the days was right to ride around
in that little electric charm.

there were four other passengers.
to help talk away the ride.
while the bus made a circuitous route
to get around blocked traffic.

warm and sunny,
he drove us well.
no one minded the
improvised route.

in the end he got us
nearly where we
all were going
in the first place, anyhow.