Vilnius

For a long time,

I keep the guidebooks out on the table.

In the morning, drinking coffee, I see the spines:

St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Vienna.

Choices pondered but not finally taken.

Behind them—sometimes behind thick fog—the mountain.

If you lived higher up on the mountain,

I find myself thinking, what you would see is

more of everything else, but not the mountain.