Imagine yourself in a restaurant

 

Go ahead and do it. Imagine sitting in a room with many tables, all set with fresh white tablecloths, plates, glasses of water sent in place, and cutlery lined up neatly. And you sit patiently until the wait staff comes for your order.

This is where my imagination took me:

 

In a restaurant

 

Ice clinks in full glasses of water

waiters set tables

the cutlery

loud against china plates

 

I hear a sound   an orchestra starting up

tuning at the conductor’s baton

I pick up the napkin

and pen from my pocket

and begin to write

 

Not like Bach or Beethoven

writing with quill and ink

on their elegant white sleeves

but on a napkin   its finish bruised

by a quick wipe

wrinkled    though barely   

by the narrow escape of a plate set

next to a goblet of water

on a table covered in white

 

The only sound in my head

is the symphony of words   

coming together

coupling    rhyming

assonance and consonance

multiplied vowels

forming a rhythm

a poem    a song

or a delightful story

 

And the world waits for the final flourish

 

  

Carolyn Wilker

Tower Poetry Summer 2021

Volume 70 No. 1

 

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