Practicing Peace

"Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace."

Joan Z. Borysenko

For this, I looked up a tube map...

Bank of America

The parking lot

smelled like London

when I was looking for bookshops alone

around Leicester Square

where there were racks of silk scarves

folded neat with bright pinks and greens and gold

two for fifteen pounds.

I touched them, watching the shopkeepers

not sure if I would give in

and buy one or two.

They were nice but

with the exchange rate

they were twice that in American dollars.

So instead, I took a wrong turn into Chinatown

smelling the cooking onions and

bok choy in vegetable oil. I cut through a shop

and went back out. Later, I found a copy

of Naked Lunch that I paid too much for.