(Princeton, 7-6-11)
In our near empty coffee shop
some summer Friday,
she must have seen
my cloth tote
with POETRY
printed on its side,
noticed the table’s lack of laptop,
heard my furious scribbling
in pocket-mangled memo pad.
Sitting two tables apart,
we exchanged glances
ever few flips of each other’s pages
over coffee sip excuses.
Eventually, she, being too
gorgeous to be reading alone
at a table for 2
in nigh-empty coffee house,
grew tired our game,
started packing
into her cloth tote,
with PROSE sewn in both sides,
the novel she was reading,
loose leaf notebook,
black ballpoint pen.
She was still packing
while I flipped 3 more pages.
Then a crumpling leaf,
like bedside alarm,
sounded atop her table.
Then she, tote, book,
spiral, glances…
gone.
Left behind: crumpled ball –
white leaf with blue lines
bearing black prisoners.
Not the used napkin.
Not the empty glass.
Just a crumpled ball
of small angled elbows
that kept nudging my peripheral curiosity
every 3 pages
for the rest of the evening.
Feindt (also known as Ink) is a Central New Jersey author who appears irregularly and without warning in various spots throughout the NY/NJ/PA area and even more sporadically in literary journals and magazines throughout the world. More of his work is available online at www.inksblot.com. Ink’s latest book, “Miserable with Fire,” is available via amazon.com.
