Choosing Dinner

For a moment it is all 1955, black and white,
and the girls all wear dresses that flare and flow.
The cars are long and optimistic
and everything is safe except weed and sex
and you look at the neon sign beckoning,
no idea that seventy years later
someone (you) will still stand outside
the flickering light, contemplating going in,
seeing the corps of black men cooking,
making you think more of New Orleans than New England,
and needing the change in time and place,
you go in

About this poem

No morals or lessons or darkness in this one. Simply remembering my favorite place to eat on Cape Cod, and why. (But the food is good too.)

Tom