Not a soul in the place. You and the kid at the counter,
busy cleaning and trying to look busy.
Sun, unusually warm for this time of year,
streams through the window.

It is kind of a still life. A photograph waiting to happen,
waiting for an artist to portray the lonely writer
sitting at a table. Nighthawks in the morning.

But you are not as lonely as you seem.
Somewhere the woman you love, loves you,
her presence filling the chair across from you,
the way she looks at you in those moments

where she falls in love with you again.

And even if it is not one of those moments,
all the others full of conversations and laughter,
full of comfortable silences. You can almost feel her.
Hell, the truth is you can feel her, even far away.

You are that entwined and happy for it,
this unexpected love late in life,
a grown up love that validates what you believed
love should be, against all evidence.

Until her.

You sip your coffee. Not lonely.
Not even as alone as you appear.

About this poem

A love poem. Love poems are the only poems I write that are about one thing.

Tom