Odessa Cafe

When sun’s light shuts off computer window

Or lightning folds the house in soft electric

Fog of thin light, plans of the past

Do not necessarily go “auto-future”.

I’d thought to glimpse back to meet you

But in the remodeled café, no time window

Permits. Must be papered up more than formica deep.

New menu glossy with pre-printed choices

I choose “today’s special” lettered on index card

Scope young couple next booth arguing over “Dutch Treat”

Recall you ordered trout in a clean sport shirt

Today I ordered salmon. This was where you said;

“I saw you sitting over there in a different coat.”

Pointing to nowhere, an empty table

& I knew you were mad or really time-tripping

Today here in a different coat, I sit

Looking for the time window but maybe

It’s a one way view.

Luckily I don’t see into the dingy past here

They have removed the empty spaces

& framed certificates and menus hang

On the fourth wall of the glass-sided vestibule

But just as I feel I may have bent time trip

Into some fake magic peek-a-boo window

A stranger in a clean sports shirt

Ordering in the booth behind me

Tells the waiter I have propositioned him

But he has no time for that stuff today

Because he lives in Brooklyn and it is raining.