The Day Everything Changed
The English Professor Reminisces
In
the fifth
grade I longed
to become a writer.
But
now I
see my fate
was sealed the day
Mr. Cheney was called
away from class.
He handed
me
our reading group’s text
and told me
to carry
on.
Coffeehouse Elegy
The chair you sat in
belongs to no one
and everyone,
comfortably angled
toward its companion,
brown leather wheezing
hello and goodbye
as patrons perch
to sip their coffee,
then flit away into their day.
Yet now that you’re gone
that chair is yours, bearing
the weight of your absence
for the flock of nameless regulars
that swarm in each morning,
nod to one another,
then settle in to work or read.
Even a migratory customer
like the man with the backpack
who snored softly in the other chair
for two weeks last summer–
who can say where he flew off to?–
would, were he to alight again,
sense the empty shape
of your presence,
would recall you filling in
your crossword, absorbed,
or quietly studying your Bible,
looking up with a charmed smile
if someone you knew
stopped to greet you.
Mornings are chillier now,
but the golden autumn light
still pours through the window
and pools in your empty chair
as if waiting
for your return.
A California native, Patricia Hamilton lives and works in Jackson, TN. Things that make her happy include travel, dark chocolate, and jazz. She won the 2015 Rash Award in Poetry. Her first volume of poetry, The Distance to Nightfall, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing.
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