The Gathering of the Day

The coffee tastes like woodsmoke,
the waitress is plump as a rumpled pillow,
and the radio mourns, mourns
as she reaches a braceleted hand towards my heart
and pours into my cup.

Spheres of white and black, and glitters of silver:
sparkly things that delighted once
in shops far away in a girlhood
unaccountably lost; and now
babies and strange, hostile,
struggling men. Oh, it is not
what any of us expected my dear, don't weep,

the coffee is sweet and bitter,
and the light is growing around us,
and the radio mourns, mourns
the gathering of the day.