Early Walk to Buy Bread
Ficus trees line a long stone wall
crisp on morning´s new page,
in sunlight just sprung over the hill.
Doves coo from the wires above a road all mine
before the school cars´takeover.
My steps, unhurried, follow as regular
a pattern as the notes of Perez´s parrot
off to the right, whistling the Peruvian national anthem
from the same branch over the past twenty years.
Returning is slightly uphill
in traffic´s increasing whup whup whirr.
The parrot´s penultimate strophe, as I pass,
has begun to crack and strain, as if he pondered
its worthwhileness. I carry breakfast
of crisp ciabatta rolls, bag sticking to sweaty arm,
and thereby live clichés: the daily bread,
the daily road; scuffing in dust
of sameness in the wake of songs.
Lark Beltran, originally from California, has lived in Peru for many years as an ESL teacher. Quite a few of her poems have appeared in online and offline journals.