Comfort Food

Comfort Food

Tonight
You worked late,
I read -
First the telephone book
What was I looking for?
Hope on the yellow pages,
Stillness in the printed word,
My being floated -
My heart a rippling wave
Licking the shore,
Then drawing back
Again and again,
As if to grasp the shifting sand.

Metaphors
They come and go
Waves and sand and shore,
And me,
I'm eating apple pie
And writing in green ink -
Fragments of TV commercials
Catch the moments the mind leaves blank,
Then scenes from a comedy romance -
Irony in expensive hotels
Between mouthfuls of poetic discourse.

Maybe I'm trying to get my bearings
Reading addresses, towns and zones
Auto shops, repairs and sales -
Between bites of spicy sweetness and crumbling crust -
Feeding the outpourings of a jaded heart?
I've been here weeks
Have I seen this room with me in it?
Before the green pen sealed
With metaphors and recorded deeds -
Like messages carved on the bark of an oak
"What's his name was here "
A date, and maybe an added sign
We carve our life in these blocks of time
When you work late,
And I eat apple pie.