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From the Labor Café in Warsaw

Jeffrey Alfier

__________
Kopernika Street. If I recall rightly

I drift through Sunday quiet the city wraps
itself in, streets nearly mute in the breaking light.
On the café patio I see the same old man who sat here
last winter watching rain induced by cold
into the season’s first snow. From his corner table
he sighs at length, as if making peace
with what cannot be changed.

Light breaks from clouds, and patrons
turn sun-burnished faces skyward.
A woman stares into the steam of her coffee
as if trying to read a name on a door.
Another wears on his face the disquiet of the daily
news, or the wrong woman in the wrong room.
I drain my cup to dregs and step out into the day,

into the weather of songbirds and kites.
The shadows of courtyard trees keep
the company of apartment windows.
Early drinkers wait for a bar to open
— a loose mob like movie extras shuffling about.
A face lingers at a pawn shop window,
puzzling over a corner mandolin.

A blind man passes, his thin cane sweeping
the pavement like a dowsing rod.
For coins from the pockets of foreigners,
a homeless local breaks into song.
At an open window, a woman waits
by a kitchen phone, lips moving without sound,
as if telling herself it will ring at last.

__________

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book is Gone This Long: Southern Poems. The Shadow Field, another collection, is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press. His publication credits include The Carolina Quarterly, Copper Nickel, Midwest Quarterly, Permafrost, and Southern Poetry Review. He is co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.

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