Fishing for a word in the Pam Pam Café. Our lunch dishes
stacked, pages on the table. ‘Worn,’ you say, ‘or tarnished.
Used.’ I try ‘blackened’ and ‘eroded.’
Your eyes fix on a lamp above your head; mine get lost
among table-legs, chair legs. Finally we settle for ‘old.’
Discovering the justness of the obvious. It has the right
ring, this plain work: like reading the whole menu and
ordering soup and a sandwich. We look at each other and
laugh, and our laughter multiplies, drawing stares. When
the waitress comes, with coffee and that smile you want to
dance to, we know that later we will go outinto the humid
afternoon and walk five or six blocks together for no good
reason, rain wetting our faces.
~from Questions About The Stars (Brick Books, 1998)
