Wednesday

The people who know me
in real life, the ones I
see all the time, some of them
speak and others never do,
known strangers, breathers and
belchers. I hear a Wurlitzer organ
and taste a thick soup, a folk soup like borscht.

When I was in Smitty's today
and asked him, the waiter told me
yes he worked there for many years,
there and another place. I told him,
you don't know me, but I watched you grow older,
seeing you about 40 times since we
caravanned among these tables.

Some of them are gray, the ones who can ramble on about the cost of bath soap.
I apologize for thinking that. We speak
stranger to stranger, within the radius, within the
borders of the town, sometimes brusquely other times
like people who pass through time together.