Happy to find it open on a Sunday
though I had to walk through the tunnel of smokers to get through the door

though after I’d scanned the chalkboard menu
the girl at the counter told me they don’t have bagels (breakfast or otherwise)
they don’t have soup
and the only pastries they had were those (few) in the case (stale)
(which I wouldn’t have wanted anyway)

though while I waited for my Smoking Buddha sandwich
leafing through my new copy of Mindfulness Yoga
I had to endure from the very nice Bose speakers mounted in the rafters
that too familiar album from those college years of stoned misery
Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here

and though when the sandwich came it was sans pesto –
that treat I had been most looking forward to

and someone had put honey in my red raspberry tea
although I had not asked anyone to

and though when the counter girl finally came around
after tidying up almost all the other tables
and asked me how my sandwich was
and I said, “It came without pesto”
and she said, “No, the pesto’s on it”
and to correct that I opened the halves of the half sandwich I had left
to show slices of turkey, cheddar, and canned roasted red peppers
but no green smear of pesto

and she repeated the fact of their not usually being open on Sundays,

and told me the story of the last time they were
and went on wiping down the remaining empty tables
and left me regretting I’d already left
a fairly generous tip in the jar on the counter

and though I heard her tell the manager who doubled as chef in the kitchen
that my Smoking Buddha panini had come with no pesto

and told him again, for it didn’t seem
to have registered precisely the first time

and though I heard nothing come of it
except for that existential finale of “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”

I wondered –
what if they asked me how they could appease me?
What would I say?
What was it I wanted?

What if they offered me a free cup of tea?
No thanks, I’d say, this one’s enough.

What about one of those pastries?
Uh, no thank you.

Cup of soup?
Um.

Our sincere apologies and a coupon for the next time?
No, no thanks. I don’t want to feel,
in addition to inconvenience,
the pain of indebtedness.

Then what? Then what?

After some meditation as I chewed on these thoughts
somehow an answer arrived –

Maybe…
maybe for them to sit and spend some time with me.

I would ask, How you doing?
What’s on your mind?
Would you put up a sign – ‘Limited menu.
Out of most things.’ And,

How’s your life?

And they’d ask,
How’s yours?

November 4, 2007

Categories: Poems
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