POLISH SONNETS-August 16, 1997

The road to Gdansk eats people but only on
big holidays like the Feast of Assumption.
Two lanes turn deadly then. Any advantage
gained by wide shoulders and the broad center,
so accommodating to passing, is

lost in a blur of travelers who ignore
storks playing among jolly rollmops
of hay and the tree hustling the breezy
promise of the Baltic though we are still
in the mouth of the Zalew Wislany...

Ignore rules, hurry one another, until
a cyclist, shirtless, his hideously scraped
chest, left elbow akimbo, lies dead-
ignored-while a policeman waits for EMS.

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