My poem 2024

 I won first prize for the adult category in the West Roxbury Library poetry contest this year.  The contest's theme was "Wonder."

(The gap of a few years is for a few reasons.  I skipped a year or two -- was too busy to meet the contest deadline -- and a couple of poems I switched over to a blog under my pen name.)

At the Green T Coffee Shop

 

When the little girl in front of me

At the Green T Coffee Shop
Uses her allowance money to pay it forward,
And I don’t even like coffee, I’m only ordering a cup
So that I can seem normal to the businessman I am meeting
To try to convince him to refer clients to me,
And the cashier says the little girl has paid for my drink,
And the businessman is standing behind me,
I try to say, “No, no, I don’t need this,
Save it for someone who needs it.”
But the little girl is looking at me with her gigantic blue eyes.
Her mother standing nearby is so smugly proud
That my focus on selling myself to the businessman
Is briefly interrupted by wanting to yell at the mom,
“Don’t teach your daughter that she needs public affirmation,
(She’ll be dealing with social media soon enough),
and that good deeds are rewarded with gratitude,
and that you should give your money to businesspeople.”
I tell my kids this story later
(I took the free coffee, I tell them, sheesh),
And they say I’m awful.
 
And I wonder, are they right?
 
A few weeks later, at the same coffee shop
(Shout out to Green T, you give bikes
To kids whose bikes were stolen.
You are Good, although I cannot comment
On your coffee, because I don’t like coffee),
I am meeting a different man.
He may be a businessman, I don’t know,
Because we are on a Date. 
We talk about –
Well, him, of course.  (So at the time
I knew whether he was a businessman,
I just don’t remember now.)
In the many emails we had exchanged leading up to this
Date,
I had said, no PDAs, Roslindale
Is a small town, my divorce is not final,
I don’t need my kids to hear any gossip.
We talked about
Him
For a while, until I was anxious
To get back to work, or my kids, or away from
Him,
And we walked out together,
And he kissed me, and I was so surprised
(I mean, it was my first date in 30 years),
I may have kissed him back,
And people were walking by and laughing
Like we were cute.
 
And I wonder: is this what cute is these days?
 
And I wonder:
Where am I in all this? 
 
I am at the Green T Coffee Shop
In Roslindale Massachusetts
And for right now
That has to be enough.