How pleasant, how perfect. Even funny.
You’ve got to a café, paid your money, and sit,
wondering how to play the rest of your day,
with a tea or else a coffee, resting on your table.
Perfume from a woman nearby,
and the space is radiant with the sound
of people happily conversing.
And you can sit and stay a while.
Lick your lips. Give a smile. Though not just
at him you most want to meet. A table away.
A book out in front, or a journal,
seeming so wise. Bright eyes and wavy hair.
So close. And yet so far from you.
What a world of possibility we live in!
You sit. You watch the crowd, writing. Writing.
Or, you read a book, see to that task
that’s been impending. A notebook before you.
You write things you know, sometimes knew,
in a life that was a long time ago.
While you sit and while away the time
at this quiet café.
All of life is here. Here, and all around,
while you sit and wonder, the afternoon
rolling on and along, about questions deeply asked.
Facts of life in life are tasked: the deepest, of course,
of all to be, how to bridge the gap so casually
between you and the person a table away.
Else, you sit forever with a question always inside,
ride one moment to the next alone.
And what would the world be like, if ever
we stopped to talk to the person at the next table,
bridge the gap between souls, turn the quiet café
into the meeting of minds, the place renewing the promise of life
to live and love with others, with us in this world.
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