The Every Day Cafe

-

 The Every Day Cafe

Despite the empty seat

across the infinity of a quiet table,

your voice can be heard

above the chatter and clatter

of the everyday cafe.


As Sinatra sings, “all the way”

from the piped-in

great beyond

your hand journeys past

the tiny civilizations of sugar and salt

to claim mine

in the name of the forgotten moon.


My food

delivered like an offering

sits

still as a Thiebaud portrait


I close my eyes

to go to where you live now

And watch

moments spin by

in a swirl of creams, golds and soft pastels

like the Carousel de Saint Pierre

whose horses all tell a different tale

Some rear.

Some gallop.

Just like we did

when you said

I love you too 

for the very last time.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Memory of the Commute

-
                                                                                                                                                                                                                        My childhood  summertime commute  whose soundtrack was the armistice of morning was a ride aboard a most reassuring breeze the kind that blew kisses to schooners and made our living room curtains dance like the veils of Mata Hari. I wo...
Read more

Heaven

-
Despite appearances   Heaven may not be  the always present  consciousness that watches over us during  beach hours, gray rain city days, or any number of man follies like battlefields the electoral college and never being able to find a parking space at Cotsco on weekends. For me Heaven is our private inner movie studio where all that is lost and forever feared is stored in film cans on strips of memory celluloid that we can call up whenever the wars of love  become too much to bear. Silent night pictures flutter by  on the silver screens of  daydreams and nightmares, that feature mostly tales of loss and temptation featuring a cast of  a thousand ghosts who haunt the shadow valley of our hearts until the wee small hours  when the lights come back on and the exit signs are clearly lit. In that still-life morning moment of want and limbo all that remains  is a carousel of  dissolving images  on shredded sprockets  which we...
Read more

As The Night Held It's Breath

-
  I’ve lost a few things along the way. I’ve lost the sound of my dad laughing at Crazy Guggenheim from the sag of his summer chair, which come summer wore a tropical skirt. A floor fan droned like a monk’s prayer, a freight train rumbled past with the weight of the nighttime surf, and Adolph, the neighborhood love-struck shepherd, howled at the moon while fireflies danced like Bolsheviks in Petrograd. I’ve lost the scent of my mom rehearsing her mournful daydreams as she misted herself with atomizers that ruled like royalty on the court of her bedroom tray in the heart of Queens, while the shiny knights of lipstick guarded the round table. I’ve lost the grumbling of my sister, her hormones raging through her like Kamikazes, leaving her adrift in a harbor of teenage wreckage. I’ve lost the throttled silence of my grandmother, her sanity long gone from the yard, taken by the crack of a tragedy bat that sent her to the bleachers of invisible mothers who had lost their children too, l...
Read more