The Coffee Shop

by Trevor Worthey

A brief gust of wind
Sweeps my hair behind my head.
A sparkle of dusty crystals,
Falling indiscernibly on the stark,
Parched ground, winks at me
As the warm kiss of a coffee shop
And the welcoming caress of cooking pastries
Greets me. I enter.
The man with me is dark
And speaks strains of English
Laden with passing French.
A cherry blossom-white lampshade
Gives Italian bookshelves
And the over-stuffed Ottoman
Their zeal. The room, everywhere
Is filled with the idioms of the world,
Hums with the emotion of thirty
Different persons. A sweet rhyme of
Oriental verse emanates from
The speakers; its reason, its own.
A pair of women compare shrieks,
In German, sipping Turkish coffee
And Espresso. The art on brick walls
Lays in portrait, images of
The country and its cities. The man
Is from Uganda, his daughters
Live in New York—they are barely younger
Than myself. We sit down
With Macchiatos, and discourse
About ‘A History of Wales’.
We speak of the world and its graces;
I inform him of a man,
Now a retired school administrator
Who has lived in the islands
Of the Pacific, who has dined
In Czech, who has climbed a waterfall,
Once upon a time, in Mexico.
A pair of businessmen, who hail
From Fontainebleau, engage
In a pitted battle of economic decision—
And immerse their tongues in chocolate.
We sit, together, speaking of things
Otherwise unheard of. And as an Irish
Melody fills the air, played jovially
On fiddles and whistles, I can’t hold back
A small smile.
                           Outside snowflakes flitter,
Their paths as inconsequential as the passing
Of time in this meeting house omnipresent.



 

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