Ministry
Theo is gone from the Plaza Restaurant in
Santa Fe
and I wonder what happened to Irene
who worked that coffee shop in Flagstaff.
And Isobel who worked the counter at
Woolworth’s in Santa Fe
and broad-hipped Ruth at the Palms Restaurant
in Fort Myers
and dark-eyed Chris who fed the transients
at the Rexall lunch counter on Guadalupe Street
in Austin.
I wonder what happened to them.
I wonder if they ever got back half as much as
they gave
to the shabby men who crouched at their
counters
in the cosmic dust of a lonely planet.
– Albert Huffstickler –
From: Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners
Photo by Hans Vivek on Unsplash
~~~~~~~~~~~
Those Winter Sundays
Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.
I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,
Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?
– Robert Hayden –
From: Collected Poems, by Robert Hayden
Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
