A Man of Leisure at the Sidewalk Cafe
Nov 4 2008


I am drinking coffee,
black and strong.
I am sitting
not sure how long,
at this small white table.
Or where all that time, once gone
holes up.
Does time get spent,
passed along, rippling-out
the way that money does?
Or does it vaporize,
like the hour when the clocks change
as if it never was?

Busy people beetle past,
barking into phones
clutching vital papers.
I go unnoticed,
except for a few steely glances
— a wastrel, an idler
too much time on my hands.

But the work goes on.
The way magma boils
beneath tectonic plates.
Which will, some day, erupt,
black sulphuric rain
blocking-out the sun.

Or how lines of gravity
— like taut tuned strings
invisible and weak —
connect me with the universe.
How this strong black coffee
sets them all abuzz;
shooting sparks,
lighting-up.