Poem: A Café in the Middle of Nowhere

There’s a little café somewhere
Between Charleston and Savannah
Where a girl in a white hat sits
In her Sunday best across from me
Watching me stare into the black
Abyss of my coffee that I blew on
Even though it was plenty cool
It sat frozen in my vision and thought
As Mary Jane waited on me patient
Like the saints she so often praised
Knowing I’d find the words even if
I didn’t think I would find them myself
When I had searched a thousand miles 
To find myself here in her company
As if preordained by fate she believed
In I doubted but I had found kindness
In the presence of a friend sipping tea
Waiting for me to continue instead
Of judging the past and the path
That lead me to her doorstep here

It’s the small kindnesses you find
That you can never repay that matter

To lost souls finding themselves  adrift
In a big wide world that can feel empty
Without meaning until someone else
Lost as they are gleams like a beacon
Bright in the dark absurdity around us

And while there were no answers
To be found between us it was perfect
In the humanness of two souls meeting
Without conditions in a café nowhere
In particular where the lost spirit feels
Not so lost in the company of a friend

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Copyright © 2021 TJS Sherman All rights reserved.

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