Poster Infidelity

The top picture to the left
is actually a picture of
a wall hanging in our home;
just part of a printed

tapestry; a gift from Michael

and Susan, from a photo
of Mari taken before
we were married.

Below it is another picture
of a picture; now of part
of a poster at the Mall

of American, where I
usually walk early in the
morning, while it is still

dark outside. I have
learned not to walk
around Lake Nokomis
in the dark.

I am not sure I should admit this, but I fell in love all over again

when I saw the poster, not with the poster, but with . . . ah,
you figure it out! I have admitted my poster infidelity to Mari.
She says it is all right.

Walking at the Mall is not
all fantasy. There are moments
when the real world intrudes,
and makes demands or, at

least, suggestions; things like
how to deal with domestic
violence. At Marshalls, it can
be done by buying a pair
of shoes.

The Mall of America is built where the old outdoor stadium

for the Twins and the Vikings used to stand, and high up

on a wall in the interior of the Mall they have preserved

a chair, in the exact physical location, where one of Harmon

Killibrew's home runs came down; a really long home run.

I couldn't find the plaque
that gives the details.

You can see what my life
has come to. I have had
to choose whether to walk
in the dark around
Lake Nokomis, where
some other old fart was
mugged, before dawn,
or at the Community
Center, where the indoor
track is so short that it takes about eleven precisely
identical laps to constitute a mile, or at the Mall or
America, with three floors about a kilometer around,
where every third store is a testimony to the fact
that Victoria doesn't keep anything secret.

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