May 2025 | David Baldwin

Looking to the West

for Matthew and Ginger

The Paleo-Indians, the first Americans,
are checking out the neighborhood.
Woe to mammoths and mastodons.

like a stuttering newsreel
from the 40s,
the same events and the same emotions
of joy and disappointment
roll across my mind

I was born in 1942.
One of the first words I learned
as a small child
was the word Jap.
I heard it ten thousand times
…