(This poem won 3rd prize–$250.00–in the annual Florence B Palmer poetry contest and was published in the 2007 “Spire,” ECC’s annual literary magazine.)*
The Pie and I
Conversations at a sidewalk café—
Pieces of sentences, disparate syllables,
Lives I’ll never know.
People breeze past, seeming purposeful—
Friday night,
On their way somewhere,
Having waited all week
For this brief moment that is almost certain to disappoint.
I smell their liberally applied perfumes and colognes
And my warmed strawberry pie.
A small flower bed on the corner
Offers a sweet, organic fragrance
As the wind sweeps over it.
I am vaguely aware of
Glasses clinking, forks hitting plates,
Cars passing, birds whistling.
A laugh from inside the café,
The loud rumble of a motorcycle.
A cell phone chirps.
A woman’s voice sings on the radio,
Barely perceptible,
Then gone,
As a convertible passes.
Car tires squeal in an absurd hurry.
To go where?
I wonder, in this little town
With so little culture.
This place, I think, is likely the best part of it,
As the night invents itself.
The show is that
There is no show.
The entertainment is that
Life is happening
And we get to hear it, smell it and even taste it,
Though the strawberry pie
Is just a memory now.
*To “see” the poem, as visually interpreted by a friend, go here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=13198294
