Coffee Cafe Customers: The Retired Paratrooper
He sits sipping thick mushroom soup Barrel-chested with stocky legs In shorts with socks and sandals His bald pate like a shiny egg With compact stature From leaping out of planes Carrying a parachute on his back Invading Granada Attacking in Iraq “There's nothing...
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Little Girl
She stretches and wiggles Clinging to her mother's knee Gaping at the saucer-sized cookies In the refrigerator case Her eyes are a-gog Suddenly she spies my cookie And, quick as a flash, She prances over and takes a bite Smiling at me A total stranger But keeper of...
Coffee Cafe Customer: The College Coed
The afternoon sunlight highlights her brunette hair cascading over her brow and falling over one shoulder She absently pulls her fingers through the tangled strands as she frowns at the physics textbook before her The figures spin and intertwine like the knots in her...
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Middle Aged Mother
She sits in the back corner of the cafe Like a well-worn fifth edition Of the Betty Crocker Cookbook Greasy paged, notes scribbled in the margins Open to the recipe for tater-tot casserole And how to stretch hamburger To feed a hungry family Only now the children are...
Gallant Girlfriends That Have Enriched My Life: Anita
The first day we moved into our house on a tree-lined street in the sun-kissed town of Pasadena, California, a young girl appeared at our door. She had round, apple cheeks and a gap between her front teeth that matched her wide open smile. “Hi! I'm Anita. I...
Gallant Girlfriends That Have Enriched My Life: Sandi Howie
I have been blessed with wonderful girlfriends at every stage of my life. The next few posts, I am going to describe these laides and share how they influenced my life. Sandi Howie I met Sandi as a little girl in “First Form” (kindergarten) while my family lived in...
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Quilter
I wrote this poem after reconnecting with a friend over Easter vacation. I have been struggling to write a poem about her for years...it finally flowed. Coffee Cafe Customers: The Quilter My old friend sits at the table like a lump of dough. The discontent rises...
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Jock
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Jock His athletic build bursts from the confines of his fragile cafe chair Like the bulging, cloth-bound collection Of models in twisting poses Drawn by Leonardo Swift pen marks capture The essence of movement His legs protrude From satin...
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Hippie
Coffee Cafe Customers: The Hippie He stands erect with a white wizard beard and long snowy hair neatly pulled back in a band. He is wearing a crisp linen shirt and creased khaki pants and burnished cowboy boots. He looks like a leather-bound collector's edition of Rip...
Bad Brayson
Herding Cats! That's what subbing for Kindergarten is like. And today there was one boy who refused to do a single worksheet. He just sat there and stuck all his crayons between his fingers. When I asked him to start working, he calmly ripped his worksheet in half....