It was way past lunch time.
The husband pulled everyone
to the hospital cafeteria.“Cheap. Fast.”
“No!” stated the daughter.
So they went to a dim restaurant
and drank pomegranate martinis,
perhaps in celebration,
perhaps, despair.

When we stop for gas in Bakersfield
I order a biscuit with sugar
but really, it’s a donut. Once a year
I allow myself this treat
and while it’s not the same as dancing,
I can recycle memories of youth
there amidst the glass case of crullers.

At the zoo I saw a mole rat
in its glass-windowed burrow —
such tiny teeth — and when
it looked at me, two inches away,
and yawned, I was no longer
disappointed that the leopard
had slept in the shade camouflaged
by its perfect spots.