To My Young Girlfriend

Contributor: Art Heifetz

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Turn off your iphone.

Come to my world.
Feel the mud ooze up
between your toes
as we cross a soggy meadow.
Learn to tell small lies
that can’t be verified.
Have a chance encounter
with a handsome stranger
in a dimly lit café
reeking of Gauloises.
Expect the unexpected.

Stop texting that u luv me,
I have trouble understanding
the clipped prose of the young.
I want to court you with
a dozen antique phrases
from the time before
my hair thinned out and
turned from chestnut brown
to leaden grey.

If you post this on your wall,
I’m going back to
older women.


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Ex-Peace Corps volunteer and retired insurance agent, currently teaching ESL to refugees and writing poems, with 36 accepted for publication since June in the US, Israel, Australia, France and Argentina.