Breakfast for Lunch

{a new poem}

Photo by Karl Taylor on Unsplash

Who else is up, I wonder –
the plow truck drivers
nannies and teachers
toll booth operators?
Even "essential workers"
has begun to sound
quaint.

Someday soon this
may seem quaint, too –
our hidden corner
at the Dam Café
where once a month or two,
we eat breakfast for lunch,
do show and tell
(old jewelry, new poems)
trade stories
of parallel paths
and a world split open,
all the pomegranate seeds
spilling, sea splitting,
the miracle always just
out of reach.

We never even reach
the Promised Land,
revelation wrapped
in recycled paper.
A country outside
closes its borders
while I open mine,
dream of a neighbor
who runs to check on us
after the call drops.
Child, mudslide,
backyard, backdoor.

I sit, we sat… I learn
present, past, and future
tense and time expressions
because to meet
is an irregular verb,
if not yet
all the way
clandestine.

We are practicing
as if we don't already leave
the curtains drawn,
as if we didn’t already draw
our lines: in, out
before, after
yours, mine
there, gone.

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