Why France? said Will a dozen years ago.

I have been answering him since then

in boulangeries and country roads –

lanes that fade to grassed ruts.

Come along if you like on the latest. Few pictures

and poems I fear of museums and monuments.

You already know the Romas at the d’Orsay

with their gold ring scam and the helpful guys

by the Metro ticket machine.

A little grit in the fromage,

Cathedrals if they have that good blue glass,

like the paper women of Matisse,

and too a lonely Romanesque church

of cream colored stone thick enough

to ward off late September sun for a thousand years.

The suitcases attend in the hall,

zippers zipped.