The Shadows of the Cafe de Flore

Out on the Myrtle Avenue terrace composing a poem about le’ terrasse de le Cafe de Flore. The City of light will always hold a good part of my soul

Early April Evening
On Myrtle Avenue
The neighborhood
Afoot on the sidewalk
The car traffic dying down
Not quiet, just quieter
I sit in a collapsible chair
A cappucino
On a wooden picnic table
Watching my world
Pass in the peace of the evening.

A terrace of my own making
I eat grapes and sip coffee
Happy,
But dream of Paris
And the Cafe de Flore.
Sitting outside on a wicker chair
En printemps
A rare sunny late afternoon
Parisiennes
Lit by a setting sun
Faces smiling
Dreaming of the wind from Africa.

Men hurrying to ‘evening designations’
With their mistresses.
Well-dressed and heeled
With dreams of love
The Boulevard St. Germain.

I remember women
Karine
Candida
Bernadette
Mira
Gabby
Julie
Bridget
Lisa
Christine
et toutes les femmes en passent
Polaroids in my memories
Forever in love
With the impossibility of me with them
And I especially loved the Welsh Rarebit
With a glass of red
While

Sitting on the terrace
Watching the foot soldiers of the Sixth Arrondisement
Heading to the cinemas,
Les Deux- Magots,
Le Drugstore.

Friends sit with you
More wine
The welsh rarebit warming your core.
Never thinking of the home
Left across the Atlantic

Your mother’s Welsh Rarebit
It was not like that
Offered by le Cafe de Flore
But I remembered hers and her,
The first woman in my life.

Some things are never forgotten
Not the Cafe de Flore
Paris
Or the last time there.
Mid-morning
St. Padraic’s Day
Julie, candida, christine gabby and their Beaus
My plane leaving in four hours
We told stories
Not hiding a thing
No secrets
Not the truth

Paris love le Cafe de Flore
Toujours et forever
I do too
As the sun sets on Myrtle Avenue
My cappuccino is done.