#LostCityBlues

I find myself here
standing lost;
lost within this foreign land.
Awash with sweat and panic
from this predicament at hand.

My mind a fluster knows not how
to move along nor fit among
this hustled, bustled crowd.

On which side of the road
around this city do they drive?
I neither know which way to look,
so fast the road I crossed
all in a hurried, frantic pass.
Will I ever make it out
of this confounding place alive?

I can’t recall which turn I took—
a lack of trusting
in my ever-failing faculties,
frustration shifting to the fore.
Was it a left here? A right there?
I can’t ask “in which direction?”
in this people’s native tongue,
so where, oh where is that
damn blasted grocery store?

I finally find it,
my stomach in uproaring knots
of helplessness and hunger.
I ask the puzzled-looking market worker
to please forgive my ignorance;
“how much do these pommes,
no, jabłka—
sorry, äpplen cost?”

“Twenty” they say.
“Twenty Koruna?” I muse to myself.
“Or was it Krone they use?
What would that be in Pound Sterling?
Are they trying to one up me,
or is that indeed a bargain?”
I decline myself to ask again—
“Dear Fräulein, I’m so sorry
for my dithering,
for I’m still slowly learning.”

The locals now must surely think
that I’m of course one of those yokels;
a bumpkin tourist, them simpletons,
the type of folk who’ll try to pay
but not with card or cash or coins,
rather, bottle caps and buttons.

These fumes of dread
consume my head.
But for now I take one long and large
inhale as I pause.
Baffled me have the laws of this land
and by some miracle
I’ve not wound up dead.
But for now I take one much-needed
bite into this awesome apple,
all plump and ripe and red.

A clever clause can be found here
at the core of this moment,
wholesome, apt and brief,
of stillness, calm and clarity.

It’s okay that I am lost—
though gradual it subsides,
there is still this sense that lingers
of unfamiliarity.

Alas, I turn my attention,
now my stomach has been lined,
to the flaunting, beguiling beauty
that I now richly find
in this much less daunting
and more so captivating city.

It was sitting here all this time,
behind, in front, surrounding me entirely;
these monuments and spires
and enigmatic old-world wonders,
inspiring me profoundly now.
Adorned in griffins of lore and legends,
that act as timeless bookends—
for marbled goddesses and gods,
watching with silken eyes, guarding
over the blessed lily gardens;
for sunlit gold formed into eagles
and mysterious mythos birds.

I find myself here
once more, standing lost,
but this time
lost for words.

© Joseph Chin
#lost #beauty #fear #confusion #newcity