Silent Opera

Brass and red walls.
Oak.
Tuscan tile on the floor.

Coffee, french vanilla,
steam rising
from the cup off to the side.

Conversations,
low and earnest,
heads huddled close
in intimate arguments.

You are surrounded
by strangers,
people

you see
every day,
familiar strangers,

who nod,
smile
and pass by,

focused
on something else,
someone else,

missing
the drama
that lives all around them.

You are surrounded,
an oddity, because
you speak,

causing strangers to stop,
mysteriously opening
themselves,

as if,
by the simple act
of a question,

you ripped apart
the dam
that held their heart

and it pours out,
floodwaters,
life, love, pain, hate

in a rush of emotion
that leaves them empty,
purged,

embarrassed,
yet suddenly free,
light, unburdened.

Each morning you come,
You sip your coffee.
You nod at strangers.

You speak, and in each new conversation,
a drama unfolds.
each intimate story weaving

with others, somehow
intersecting
without touching, until

like a grand opera,
each voice combining
in a mountain of sound,

a climax
unseen by the very strangers
who think, only think,
they live alone.

========================

This shot, taken with my phone, is of “The Coffee Exchange”, a coffee shop in Rutland, VT. I come here often when I travel with Rona up to Rutland. She does her things up here and I sit and write or work.

Coffee houses are a long time love for me. Those who know me from my many years in Botetourt county in Virginia know I used Mill Mountain Coffee as a living room and office, spending several hours a day there.

At first, places like coffeehouses seem like a constant ebb and flow of strangers. But with a simple breaking of the pattern, a simple word spoken to a stranger, the whole pattern changes. At Mill Mountain, I found new friends. I discovered a church I became part of and loved deeply. There I shared my own heartache and victories, and the heartache and victories of others I came to know.

What struck me was how many people came there in solitude, day after day, and yet, with just a word, just the slightest opening of the door, these same solitary people would open up, obviously hungry for intimacy, even with a stranger.

It’s a pattern I see everywhere, and a lesson that has been helpful as I moved to New England.

New Englanders have a reputation of being cold (compared to the “warmth” of Southerners.). I haven’t found that to be true. I find people up here to be a delight, and ready to open themselves up deeply.

But they won’t until someone opens the door. Asks. Shares. Talks to them. Takes the first step. That does not come naturally to me, a shy person, but oh, the rewards of taking that small risk and speaking!

Tom