Found and Lost
A corner in the café,
My coffee digested,
My book left unopened.
A point of view.
*
Watchful, I see
Cigarettes in hold as newspapers unfold,
and conversations reflect on days of old.
My book hibernates because stories
Abound around it:
Some are spoken, others are told
In silence, in the fixed gaze
Of the stranger, curious, attentive.
*
The man in the fedora, alone, pensive,
Emits an aura
Of wisdom;
A smartphone held alongside today’s paper,
The past and the present in harmony.
His table doesn’t bear a coffee or a tray,
Only more papers, the news today;
Perhaps all he required was a seat,
To rest the feet that have walked
His sixty-five years transpired.
*
I wonder how many newspapers he has read,
How many cafés, cities, countries tread,
How many times he has said
Hello, please, thank you, goodbye.
I wonder if he, too, sat in a café corner,
Watching, searching for something unknown —
A young man become old,
But still alone,
For now.
*
Up he gets, slowly, burdened by
These years passed, or simply by
This drowsy winter’s evening.
He stands for a moment, still;
He has no belongings, so his hands fill
Only his pockets, seeking warmth.
He stumbles slightly, leaving the papers behind
When he exits; starts walking again,
as he has for decades, to find…
Who, or what?
*
Those hands could escape his pockets to be
Wrapped in the fingers of one long-loved;
Or they could be thawed by a clutched pipe
If he sits in solitude, isolation.
Still sheltered in my café corner,
All I know is that I know little.
His life — each passion, trial and tribulation —
Is like the closed book within my reach:
Both are tales left to me untold.
*
Like clockwork, when this man’s chapter
Concludes, a child sits where he sat,
Another story to be written.
The man in the fedora must know
Love, must have yearned for it, found it, lost it;
The child’s time for discovery was just beginning;
Mine continued. Until:
My eyes divert. I see you,
And our story-searching eyes meet…
I didn’t notice the man in the fedora,
Or the child that replaced him as he
Went on his way.
What I noticed was the café’s music:
Don’t think twice, it’s alright, Bob Dylan spoke
That day.
*
I admit I thought twice;
I looked away,
But I could feel your eyes focused
On me, and, when I recovered, I looked again,
Bob was right, I thought: it’s alright, I thought.
And it was, when I fell for you— and it still is, I think.
But your thoughts stray now; your eyes
Don’t search for my story like they did
That day.
When I gaze at you now,
You look away.
*
We’re closer now than we were in the café,
But a table still separates us, documents spread upon it.
That day, when you saw that man, the papers on his table
Displayed news, unwelcome and public;
Other papers,
Unwelcome but private,
Are between us now,
But surely, surely, I think, it’s alright.
Please think twice.
*
The man in the fedora: what did he leave the café for?
A love, I hope, that lasted years;
Ours, I fear, has faded.
Tears consume me, and I yearn
For the child’s naivety,
For the innocence of when our eyes first met,
For our story to continue…
*
But we are betrayed by experience,
The café, our love, forever gone,
And I wish, unlike a rolling stone,
We could gather what we roll beyond.
