Whose voice is this

saying easy, easy now?

Some alien with a foreign accent.

No one I knew as a child.

I was nursed on expectation

set on permanent watch

for the next step

taught to run for buses

urged to ponder more

exquisite meaning. It was

assumed one smoldered

in the slow line at the bank.

So this is what it comes to?

Breathing in

and

breathing

out?

From the Winter 1985 issue of Inquiring Mind (Vol. 2, No. 2)