MATTHEW RETOSKE

A Place to Wait Out the Rain

They sit together in gray and green. 
Chased by boredom to activity, 
She hammers the white tips of her unpainted nails 
Into a Caerffili of rotten clotted cream 
Left over from the post-war ration days. 
This barley and malt nostalgia 
That only Americans, and divergent lovers 
Seem able to detect. 
She sits alone in gray and green. 

They sit inside beneath a gray paneled sky 
Dim lights and disinterested plaster 
Set against the hedgerow undulation. 
In the unique melancholy of tourist towns 
During offseasons that begin later 
And end earlier every year. 
Picking some dust from the foam in his beer 
He has nothing to say, 
He sits alone in green and gray. 

Together in disparate occupations 
That intersect with eclipse-like frequency; 
She never wonders what he is thinking about; 
The chipped pint glass or the tea pot spout 
Facing each other oblivious. 
Two comets straying through two separate galaxies 
One on each cheek of the table's time-creased face, 
Buried beneath the gray silence of the place. 

Cigarette smoke crawls across the ashtray 
And swirls away in circles of gray 
From two opposing smoldering sticks; 
They consume space for two absorbed in solitude, 
Neither lamenting the bare-knuckle
Yesteryears that reverberate 
Undisguised through the scene. 
They sit alone, one in gray- the other in green.

copyright MATTHEW RETOSKE