 This poem is by Charles Symitz, and it's called Worryers Anonymous. We are a doomsday sect with a membership that runs into millions. The waitress stepping out for a smoke is one of us, and so is the dog tied outside the bank, watching strangers go in and out. It's a season of vague apprehensions, rambling soliloquies, deepening disquiet. Yesterday a fellow won the lottery, an old lady got killed by a falling brick. It's the way lovers hold hands on the corner, as if they'd just come out of an elevator that had been stuck for hours. Grateful for a breather before some other trouble taps them on the shoulder and vanishes in the crowd. This poem was initially published in the Times Literary Supplement, the Times of London. In 2004 it was later collected in Symitz's volume called Master of Disguises, but in a different version I actually prefer this earlier version, which is the one that I read. This poem was actually given to me by a staff member who worked for me some years ago. I don't know why she gave it to me, but anyway I thought it was a great poem, and I actually keep a copy of this poem on my desk. Charles Symitz was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia at the time today, Serbia, in 1938, and he came to the United States as a teenager in the 1950s. He did not speak English until he was a teenager, but he has a very distinctive and I think very American in a sense voice, while at the same time still reflecting his Eastern European origins I think. There is the shadow of the influence of Kafka among others in his work. He was a poet laureate of the United States, which is a one-year position appointed through the Library of Congress. He's also won several awards for his poems, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert Frost Medal.