Souvenir
In response to prompt 25, “Paris Postcard”
It was April then, unseasonably warm,
Twenty-four years ago.
I met a boy at the Café Phares.
He was too unfinished to be called a man.
We sat on the terrace,
Sipping coffee and smoking American cigarettes.
He lolled in a chair,
Desperate to be mistaken
For Alain Delon in his heyday.
A question startled him, and it was only
After his companion translated that
He offered up his lighter.
She spoke beautifully, without a
Trace of an accent,
Raised by a daughter of the Ancien Regime.
Our bill for coffee and cakes
Was two hundred twenty-five francs.
I paid it, and as we left
I noticed the boy’s reflection
When I opened the glass door to the street.
This is a response to National Poetry Month Event prompt 25, “Paris Postcard.” Thanks Sylvia Wohlfarth for the inspiration! They tell me the Phares is still there. That was Marc Sautet’s original cafe philo, and you could feel it. Even the smoke smelt like it was concentrating. What a place for someone who didn’t know himself. This poem is a madeleine.
