Cafe Tanka

1.

Of course it is a

kind of nature: the waiters

and the waitresses,

always under twenty-five,

lattes blooming in their hands.

2.

Why should poets praise

the rhetoric of seasons?

Why not instead that

fleeting and more creamy truth

bequeathed us by Capuchins?

3.

Reality in

fives and sevens: everything

must fit the measure:

parrots on a springtime limb

or sparrows on the tables.

4.

Morality may

sidle in. Don’t think too long

about the wages

sweated in the beans. Or muse

on bull calves trucked from dairies.

5.

Alone in all this

wild percussion, whistled steam

and clattered chatter,

the poet finds a stillness

here, down inside the poem.