Perhaps Paris

. . . perhaps a Paris

      very much like Paris or not quite Paris.

                   --Herbert Morris.  “Sophia and Marcello on a Bench”

Perhaps Paris isn’t Paris at all, if it ever was.
Just a twisted vine flowing up blue shutters.
Before you arrive, it is no longer there
which makes it convenient to invent.
Like anything that can be something else--
location, landscape, tonal shades, buildings,
and the river, ah, the river, splitting right from left.
How convenient for landmarks residing
on one side or the other, Ile de la Citė
in the middle, Notre Dame where it has always been,
so you can point the way from wherever you are
and almost always be correct. And that’s the point,
isn’t it? To be right rather than wrong
so you won’t have to apologize because Paris
didn’t work out like it should have with her,
very much or not quite like you promised
until something so very Parisian made its own plans,
the ones that included walking away. The bench
on one bank or the other won’t be confused
when the story that should have begun in Paris
comes to a conclusion, very much like Paris,
where it begins to be something other than itself.
Like any story you don’t want to end.
But it has to. The one you can’t put down until it does.
At least it happened in Paris, or somewhere
very much like it, but really, she knew even before
it started, it was going to be something not quite.