The Assignment

I’m supposed to write a poem
On a bus or on BART
Naw, how about a park?
Church, the laundromat, in the hospital waiting room?

Awwh, the gym
It’s ladies only
I like it’s just women
Conversations overheard are more personal
Not afraid of the male ear

Treadmills, bikes, weights, ellipticals 
There’s so much to choose from
Or how about a class?

So goes....
On the recumbent bike,


I  Hear

The whirling of the fans
The printing press rumble of the treadmill
Hot gossip
Owner chiding a women for exercising on her bad knee
Muffled music from the speakers


I Observe

A mother care taking of her daughter.
San Francisco in daytime
Meg Whitman
San Francisco’s night lights
Meg Whitman
on the TV monitor

I Sense

My pulse
My perspiration, which my trainer calls fat sweat
The lady behind me lifting weights,                                   
the tinks and chinks of leaded metal colliding
Time ticking away on the clock,                               
thirty minutes goes by fast amid the lady's only universe

I suppose it is time to go now
I suppose I have a poem.