Tonight's Poet Corner: Nobody Panic!

Nobody Panic!
by Belinda Roddie

When the world spins too fast
for him, he sits cross-legged
on the pavement, smoking and spitting
onto his hands as if to keep them clean
of the nicotine. When the noise

has gotten to be too much, the veteran
across the street screams profanity
to accompany the traffic. If
the sound is going to be overwhelming,
like the gunfire he grew so used to hearing
at night while fighting to sleep,
it has to consume everyone
and everything.

I keep my book against my hip, my bus
card pinched between two fingers. The cold
could freeze my brain and all its synapses,
but the earthquake in my stomach
is subsiding, and the Golden Gate Bridge

still crackles with static from yesterday's
storm, and somewhere, we have all
become calm enough to dance
without our hearts picking up speed
during the impromptu choreography.