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| Say What? Image created using Kid Pix Drawing and Paint tools. © by Ruth Zachary |
The Second Saturday Writing Group in Greeley has decided to meet in a Village Inn in April.
The idea is to stimulate our writing by picking up on some of the conversations that over flow into our range of hearing, in an effort to improve our skills in relating not just the words people speak, but also to convey economically in our writing their meaning, their tone, individual character, and so on.
We all agreed that written language has to be different than spoken language.
Coincidentally, I just ran on to a poem I put down several years ago that came from just the same sort of experience in a public place, our group is hoping to respond to this time.
Coffee at the Martin Diner
Nine-thirty coffee break at the corner table, in the
Martin Diner along the road.
Alone, pen poised to put words to the notebook’s
unwritten whiteness, empty cup awaiting brew.
A dozen or so truckers are filing in, overflowing
the chairs, running the tables.
Shifting eyes
covet my half-empty corner; resent the boundaries
of my womanhood in a place they thought
they owned.
A burly hand
anonymously turns the empty chair opposite me
to another direction. As he sits,
the broad wall of his back jostles my table.
The waitress waits on them, even though
I was here first. Cups clatter as she pours.
“Black”
one says, scooping sugar.
“Black and sweet, Like my women,”
The others guffaw.
Broad-back turns, and before I get coffee,
his hand conficates the cream on my table.
Rattles come from another corner, as the
conversation raises in volume.
“Keep ‘em barefoot”
They glance at me for my reaction.
Another voice adds,“and pregnant, Haw haw haw.”
I try not to react to their tired cliches,
thinly veiled hostility, but
pen poised, words evaporate.
Pushing against the broad-backed man
with her hip, the waitress finally pours
coffee for me, scaldiing hot,
I taste. It is bitter, acid, undrinkable as is.
“Cream
and sugar, please,” I say.
She retrieves the now greasy cream pitcher,
from the circle of men and places it on the table.
I pour cream into bitter black.
Pen poised; page stained by verbal grafitti,
I begin to write my presence into the room.
Furtive glances eye my writing.
The din is slurped up, swallowed suddenly.
“Where has the summer gone?” one man asks,
as if to fill the silence.
The tone is now polite, banal, benign,
suspicious of the power of the pen?
The morning is written.
Writing and Images are the Copyright © of Ruth Zachary.
