Sneaking away from home to write in a cafe

 

     The Moony café now a restaurant once

      was a nave where I stopped 

     many eves after work 

                       before reuniting 

with the domesticity 

     my family of six 

     had wrought.  

I liked to sit in the back 

     along the wall--patron chats

    did not distract 

from the guttural

ones I seek with

    my journal. 

Sometimes the word winds 

     blew 

across the pages, sometimes 

     so hard 

               they pressed down 

on my hand, sometimes 

     only a light snow of longings, 

sometimes making sense,

    sometimes not, sometimes 

words landed perfumed, 

sometimes not.  

When I got home, my lateness 

     was forgiven but sometimes 

     not. 

Even now decades gone, 

     I am startled I got away 

    with it so often, sometimes 

I cannot bear to remember 

how I stole the time, 

     sometimes I can.