Perched on a plastic chair and
Drinking coffee made because I paid for it
I am mainly unlike Shakespeare’s Cleopatra
And a lot less like The Bard himself.
The dark cafe clank and hiss
Machines
A weary accompaniment to barista voices and
Dreams of distant shores
Where sun may one day shine.
Rocks break under these waves.
Men, we might say ‘ship-wrecked sailors’,
Tired eyes mostly
Waiting
Stand in line.
They measure time.
Across from me sits
This poem’s subject unaware his fate
A ‘tall slim chap’ ‘soft features’
‘Asiatic’?
Words neatly fail to hit the spot.
He stares ahead
But does not see the intervening space
Fingers rubbing
Pensive nails worn down
Eyes casting out glances
Like a fisherman who fears the sea holds some
Leviathan that will seize his line
And pull him down.
When our eyes meet,
Wanting to give him something free of charge,
I smile warmly.
His gaze flees mine.
What else to offer?
Let us instead imagine
‘all hell breaks loose’:
A whale shatters the ocean’s calm
Stretching an instant
Slow motion spray
Explodes the single ray of light that exists in this cloud-filled sky
Creates a rainbow
Whose beauty enraptures.
Behold our latter-day Jonah
Stops cowering
And leaps now toward his ‘monster from the deep’
Realising with perfect clarity that freedom and everlasting joy
Lie inside her gaping jaws.
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