Jim’s All-Night Diner
by James Tate
Solemnity around the samovar
warms the old interlopers:
grief is momentarily rinsed
away. They wait as if for
a certain invitation.
The voices outside are
a panoply of scorn.
These yellow thumbs haul up
the hot liquid, but when
the cup’s drunk it is more
like an orphanage.
The dead letter department,
the salvation army,
the animal rescue league—
these are the only destinations.
One desires to touch
their lowly shoulders
with a plastic spoon
and change them into green rabbits
on a white Alpine mountain
their gauzy faces exhilarated.
Photo by John Matychuk on Unsplash
POETRY and PLACES 