Poem of the Week

THE GRAND OPENING OF POPPY’S

(A poem addressed to the reader)

It’s the grand opening of Poppy’s

beside Ray’s Cigar and Tobacco Café.

Streamers wrap people in

celebration as I watch from the warmth

of a coffee shop across the street.

Here, “Have yourself a very merry…”

drains from the corner perched speakers

and mixes with chattering conversations.

My coffee cup desperately wants refilled.

The window reflection

doubles the black canisters

and the red coffee bean poster behind me,

echoes possibilities.

An empty Ikea chair

sits cocked next to me,

tells me that in any relationship,

you would be sitting here.

Imaginary you fills the vacancy,

reminds me that it’s cold outside,

why I’m here

and not at the grand opening of Poppy’s

beside Ray’s Cigar and Tobacco Café.

Morning sun filters down the slats of the bedroom blinds.

Outside the autumn leaves drift

a soft spiraling toward the ground

like December snow.

In anticipation my boyhood mind winks

alive from a year suffered long in wait.

For down the weathered street,

around the next bend,

up the narrow alley,

a murmuring carol echoes

“Soon…”

Soon

I shall awaken to find wait’s end.

My siblings and I will rush

down the carpeted stairs,

two, three at a time

and lay siege to the child-scarred table,

now wrapped in white linens

garnished with red and green,

crowned with mother’s glazed cinnamon buns.

Electric excitement dances from us

to my mother’s twinkling eyes.

Soon,

I will sit couched

where the crook of the arm meets the living-room sofa wedge.

The monotony of dad reading Matthew 1:18

invades my reverie, while I play

GI-Joe with sheep stolen from the wood nativity,

resting on the 1969 GE stereo.

Soon,

Hark, the herald angel, will sing

when the wise men and the shepherds have come,

then gone.

Indian-legged on the floor, my mother

will pull treasures from underneath the tree.

Later,

as we gather around the dinner table

in my grandmother’s basement

watching the Yule fire dance,

I will notice that for once

conversation has turned from

drunk uncles,

runaway daughters,

gossip of other family iniquities.

Goodwill between aunts and uncles,

fathers and sons,

husbands and wives

will permeate the room.

Now, a lifetime later,

an unspoken wall separates

me from brother,

sister and other,

division plows the snow-white street

with no crosswalk.

Our leather coats of conceit

we refuse to lay down

over the puddles of warmed winter.

We skate across the thin-pond ice of conversation

artfully figure-eighting potential fissures

that would dump us into chilled reality.

Older I am,

but perhaps not wiser.

For the scene of my early days

persistently replays,

teaches me

that the goodwill between us

is better than no will between us.

As the years devour the future,

a hope wells within

that such a day will come,

that it will come soon.