Lunch

All we had to worry about
was where to have lunch. We had
time, money, health, happiness. The pursuit
of lunch down a wide avenue
with restaurants on every corner
was all we had to worry about. And yet
you worried about everything
from war in the Middle East
to Al Qaeda to ISIS to sepsis
to your daughter’s histrionic personality disorder
to asteroids to climate change to trolls. Please pass
the arugula salad, I said.
There was a brief pause then
as you watched me pile lettuce, pine nuts,
cherry tomatoes, slices of ripe avocado
onto my plate. Then you resumed worrying
about George W, the polar bears, the flu,
Iraq, Afghanistan, China, Russia, nuclear
winter while I stared out the window
of a fine restaurant in a glass city in summer
in the first decade of the 21st century,
and chewed.

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