JIM RICHARDS
LET’S
Let’s let the ants have a little more time to dig their tunnels before we exterminate them. Let’s
see if the rope of the swing we tied in the pear tree has become an inextricable part of the branch.
Let’s not talk to the birds anymore. Let’s calculate how many mittens have washed down the
gutter into the sewer each spring, and then we’ll consider scarves. I don’t know who held this
dollar bill before me, but it could have been a hacker. Let’s go digital and deal with the
drawbacks. Let’s be sure to ask our guests, How do you like your eggs? Let’s remember to listen.
Shall we wander into the shade? Let’s.
Jim Richards’ poems have been nominated for Best New Poets, two Pushcart Prizes, and have appeared recently in Sugar House Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Southern Poetry Review, South Carolina Review, Juked, Comstock Review, Cumberland River Review and others. He lives in eastern Idaho’s Snake River valley and has received a fellowship from the Idaho Commission on the Arts.