Talking until the room fills

[Lawrence]

This poem annoys me to know end.
I spent awhile on it and it's giving me lots of trouble.
Advice is needed, thank you.

We sat so long in the empty cafe,
There in the webs of our conversation,
Talking of friends who moved to Michigan,
Of uncles who dropped and died while raking levees,
Of camping trips in the hooded darkness of Vermont,
That soon, it became dawn, and the heavy doors swung open,
And memories from both sides came pouring in,
Like the opening of a mall complex,
Filling the tables with fresh patrons,
With grandfather’s dressed in fishing attire,
Shouting at waitresses, demanding their breakfast,
With cousins and sisters carrying on,
Some with teacup poodles in their purses.

Conversations crowded the cramped cafe
While the faint smell of cologne flirted with the scent of coffee
And everything that was ever alive in us
Was then alive and present in that room
Though we noticed nothing but each other.

I think back to what my grandmother said
That someone is a conversationalist
If you know you could stay sane as Eskimos with them.
I smile, as I picture us alone in an igloo,
With a circle sawed into the ice,
Laughing at the thought of fire,
Neglecting the nibbles on our fishing lines.