Talking until the room fills

[heslopian]

A good narrative poem with some very strong lines, some great images and a tender syntax.

We sat so long in the empty cafe,
There in the webs of our conversation,
Talking of friends who moved to Michigan, Like the rhyme of "conversation" and "Michigan".
Of uncles who dropped and died while raking levees, Is "dropped and" needed? How about just "died whilst raking levees"?
Of camping trips in the hooded darkness of Vermont,
That soon, it became dawn, and the heavy doors swung open, Would "that it soon became dawn and the doors swung open" work better? The sentence, as it is, seems slightly too elongated.
And memories from both sides came pouring in,
Like the opening of a mall complex,
Filling the tables with fresh patrons, Love this simile.
With grandfather’s dressed in fishing attire, As, in this context, "grandfathers" is plural, it shouldn't have an apostrophe.
Shouting at waitresses, demanding their breakfast,
With cousins and sisters carrying on,
Some with teacup poodles in their purses. I like the phrase "teacup poodles," but I'm not sure these two lines are really needed. I think they make the simile go on for too long.

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.

Is the first sentence necessary? For me it just re-iterates what we already know. Would shortening the second line to "the scents of cologne and coffee flirted," removing "that was ever" in the third, changing "in that room" to "here" in the fourth, and "nothing but" to "only" in the last, so that it looks like how I've put it below, help the rhythm at all? Again, your sentences are great, but you bludgeon them a bit with excessive lyricism; I'd recommend you be more concise. That's a major fault of mine, and one I'm still struggling to overcome.

The scents of cologne and coffee flirted,
And everything alive in us
Was then alive and present here
Though we noticed only 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.

Excellent last verse. The Eskimo comparison is simply divine; haunting yet funny and romantic yet strange.

Thanks for the read, Lawrence