Coffee and Astronomy

She’s alone at a table for four at the bookstore coffee shop,

same as me,

and our eyes meet and I think

“It’s too bad I’m a screwup,” and I think

“Maybe I could straighten out if it meant I could kiss her,”

as she sits like a book I just need to read, two of us

taking up eight spaces across this place;

we could conserve and share,

“Think Globally, Act Locally,”

sit at the same table in polite mystery of one another,

shower together to save water

but I don’t know if she cares

about water conservation,

I can only tell that her hair falls like rain,

she has more fashion sense than I do, our eyes meet

and I’m scared of her,

all her “No”s,

all her “Yes”s,

her “I want to have a baby”s,

her eyes

as small as stars,

the light having taken years to reach me here

at this gargantuan table as big as my life.

This poem appears in the anthology The Great American Road Show from Logan House Press and in Mason’s Things We Don’t Know We Don’t Know from The Backwaters Press