Watching a mobile in a coffee shop

The shapes, the colors.

I was watching as you turned your attention.

And then the wind blows its breath.

The light catches the face of a card

hanging from a wire bent just so.

A face.

It’s just a cutout cardboard image –

a reproduction of a painting –

a portrait of a woman reading.

She’s not looking at me.

She wasn’t looking at the artist

when he was painting her a hundred years ago.

Maybe it was longer.

Her eyes turned down.

You turned your attention.

I couldn’t see behind your eyes.

A shape, a color.

What thoughts dance between us?

Cardboard cards dance in the wind,

the light catches your face.

The woman reading on the postcards,

cut out in rectangles

without one fluttering an eyelash.

An eyelash catches my attention.

A shadow on the wall or one lightly on your cheek.

And then I turn towards you for a moment.

That’s all it was ever going to be.

There were colors.

Shapes.

You turned between the counters in the afternoon.

That you saw me once in a hundred years

will have to be enough.

I might remember that your hair

was pulled back in a braid just so.

I drank iced tea.

If you have time, give Colin Hay a listen - just a YouTube away

Reading women mobile - YouTube - 1 minute

Ice water is future tea and other circular nonsense

 

I walked into a coffee shop and found myself sitting on a bar stool at the counter.

‘Weren’t you here yesterday? I said to the older man with a big nose and a ruddy complexion.

‘That was your former self,’ he said.

‘Well, who are you now? I said.

‘Actually, I was wondering almost the very same thing when you walked in,’ he said.

‘How about if I join you?’ I said.

‘Why not?’ he said, as I sat down on a bar stool at the counter.

Together, we lifted our empty glass and asked the barista for our refill of our regular currant iced tea.

‘Weren’t you here yesterday?’ she said.

‘Anything’s possible. Have we met? I said.

‘That’s what you said yesterday,’ she said as she set a full glass of iced tea on the counter in front of me.

‘Was I with anyone else?’ I said.

‘Well, it looked almost as if you were talking to yourself.’ She smiled.

That smile. I remembered that smile. Some things are unforgettable. Like her smile.

And that’s when I suddenly realized where I was. I was sitting on a bar stool at the counter at my regular coffee shop drinking my regular iced tea. Or the currant iced tea. Iced tea is iced tea, after all.

The bell over the front door dinged and I looked up from where I was drinking my iced tea to see who it was.

I laughed.

I saw a man with a big nose and a ruddy complexion coming through the door who looked a lot like me. I wondered if he knew who I was.


Card Mobile - Women Readers - May 2017 - Aimee's Cafe and Coffee House - 1 min video

One man's wondering view from the counter at Aimee's