Bresina’s Cafe
two old men stand and wave their arms and hands in a gentle mid-west kata
what they’ve seen and wanted
whom they both might know
all the change and who has passed
and who’d had that surgery
old friends the other didn’t know
time they spent like nickels and dimes
many loads a day
of egg crates and bottled milk
all the fish they caught
the day OSHA came to the shop and shut them down
for lifting thirty-seven pounds or more above your head
ten years of work and now it stops
and do you know Mueller down by the dam?
my house is there behind the tress, so many tress
some herbal thing she’s drinking to lose wieght
it’s funny who you run into and who you know
in Rapid City, South Dakota, a pretty slow place
I heard they had some good wheat years
she works for my cousin
I drove truck for thirty-five years
but she didn’t really advertise
I haul to the cities
she’s got a couple guys who spread the word