I’m feeling nostalgic today. Thinking about the odd schedule I used to keep 6-7 years ago that allowed me to take breakfast at a local restaurant on a weekday. A random Thursday morning, hitting a diner, cafe, or restaurant around 8:30-9 a.m. After the working crowd inhaled their eggs and gobbled their coffees. The slow down before the lunch rush. Typically I would find a booth, and hang out with a book, notepaper, and pen. Read, eat, and write…and listen. My confession to the faithful 67 followers, I am nosy. I enjoy listening to the way people talk to each other, the rhythms, the tone. Two poems came out of this “hobby”. I’d like to share them with you today. I don’t believe I’ll ever submit them for publication, but for me, when I read them I can see the people in the booth next to me. Perhaps you sat next to people similar to these.
TWO TABLES OVER
Four ladies at the diner
I can hear the flowered hat
and lace blouse in their voice
A mental corset shaping words
Manners learned from a hard-covered
book control the meal
It is a lovely visit
A fine afternoon
Let us meet again next Friday
Classic female behavior
19th-century thinking
They are a dying breed
A Bellingham Cafe on a Thursday, 8:24 a.m.
Weekday morning sitting
at a booth waiting for
an ordered hash and
yolked breakfast to arrive
The cafe is quiet, empty
Until
THEY
arrive
Barnacle-heavy bent men
Fill up the booths around me
one by one taking booths for four
Give huffled grunts as they
walk passed my booth, the best one
Open full volume apps to gamble
While they wait to order
Like steam engines at the
end of the line sighs puff out
loudly as lower backs and cheeks
seek a comfortable spot
on the spring-broken soft bench
Redbones do not find their mark
Years of compost gas escapes
May I move to a booth by
the sunny window, please?
A request I know they notice
Women are always cold
shannon p. laws 