11 O'CLOCK DINER

Note: This is a poem I wrote several years ago, and have been trying to revise for some time, but haven't come up with ay bright ideas. Maybe your fresh eyes can help guide me toward what the poem wants to become. In any event, I post this to celebrate what it means to be with other people, even strangers.

11 O’CLOCK DINER 

Expecting nothing but quiet,

I should’ve remembered better.

At 11 o’clock

no one wants to eat.

We eat to give our hands, our introversion

something to do,

our extroversion one more thing to talk about.

We tolerate décor that mocks

grandmother’s living room

to gather around tables that, like grandmother’s

always welcome us.

As packed as a shopping corridor,

as communal as a minivan on family vacation.

As undiscovered as the deepest canyons in the deepest

seas of our collective soul,

the 11o’clock diner is

now and always the hidden public square.

We come here to relax, to laugh and to yell

but unbeknownst to us we come here

to find that part of ourselves

that screams to be found,

that part that’s hidden as we walk or drive down the street

keeping to ourselves, looking shady to everyone

because we’re afraid of everyone.

But for some reason when we’re in the right place

our guard is let go of and we dance,

on pleather, no less, but we dance

throw blank stares, confused looks

but we look and we see with our eyes.

We see into stranger’s souls and smile

like we rarely ever do.

They smile back, and we know we

are found, that we have returned.