(title of a Hopper painting, 1913)

Don’t believe what you see
there’s the fog in the background for a reason
and the men, whose faces you can’t make out
loitering around a store, whose name
you can’t read… some items set out
for sale a distance from them

I see it too

the door to the store doesn’t open
the men huddled by a corner they can’t
get around, don’t show themselves
past their black clothes, shrunk  to
a floater in my eye  I can’t get rid of

I’m waiting for the fog to lift, to see people
enter & leave the store, sun smiling
faces reflecting my own

only that’s not where I am; and
where precisely is that? I need to know,
told you, the artist doesn’t say

the cost to sun this scene might have been
more than he could have  afforded, no clues
to how he got to where I’ve also been

Linda Lerner’s Taking the F Train (NYQ Books, 2021) a finalist in the 2022 Paterson Poetry Prize. How It Was (2020—2021) And Is, (Iniquity Press/vendetta Books, 2023); poems in or forthcoming from: Gargoyle, One Art, Big City Lit, Pinyon Review, Verse Daily, anthologies, NYC from the Inside, 2022) & Arriving at a Shoreline 2022.