Just Down the Block

A place to come when a poem won't start at home.

Photo by Sabri Tuzcu on Unsplash

I’m fortunate to have more than one “third space” in my life and my neighborhood — places where I can be at-home away from home, busy and unbossed, around other people and by myself (if I want to be) at the same time. Here’s a love-song to the third space that helps me get my writing done.

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4 P.M. AT THE CAFÉ BIENVENUE


Each afternoon, an hour before closing time,
Mr. Host begins to circle the angled, spacious room,
his soft broom stroking the scarred wooden floor,
and Mrs. Host behind the coffee bar begins
to clatter dishes in her tiny sink, drowning
the quick quiet voices at the next table
and the jazz on the radio, drowning
whatever you thought you meant to write next
in your notebook or across your laptop screen.
A reminder that soon it will be time to say goodbye
to the twinkle-lit plastic grapevine above the coffee bar,
to the silent piano lounging in a corner,
to the high ceilings and drop-down lamps,
to the scatter of unmatched tables, and the mural
of a Paris street scene along the back wall;
time to look instead at the street outside the picture windows,
at the door through which Mr. Host will soon tug in
the wheeled planters, geraniums drowsy after their day
on the sidewalk. Time to look out and remember
that this spacious angled room is not your home,
that even the Hosts live several streets away, as you do
in a different direction, and in an hour or so
it will be time to thank them and say goodbye, 
say au revoir to the Paris street scene, walk out the door
and down a street you know. Time, though, here and now, 
for one more coffee, Mrs. Host will pour it with a smile,
then turn back to the clatter in her sink where she is waiting
for one last cup to close the rite that ends the day.

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[You can listen to an audio version of the poem using the little widget above the photograph.]

Does this happen to anybody else, that your writing desk sometimes turns to lava? Nope, can’t sit there; nope, can’t be alone in the apartment with a blank page or a blank screen. Danger, Will Robinson.

It happens to me, often, at the point when I’ve had an idea or been captured by an image and maybe done a little free-writing to explore it and now need to sit down and take a first pass at putting a Poem-Shaped Object onto paper. To be clear, once I start creating a first draft, it’s a pleasure — not always easy, not always fast, but something I know how to do and enjoy doing. Only I manage to forget that, each time I’m about to start a new poem.

What to do? Tuck the notebook into the purse, change the shoes, head out the door and down the street — one whole block! — to Cafe Bienvenue (not its actual name, but close enough). A cheerful greeting from Mr. and Mrs. Host, who don’t know my name but know just how I like my latte; a seat at one of the window tables, if I can get it; a sip or two of espresso and hot foamy milk, a quick glance around to see who’s up to what at the other tables … before I know it I’m bent over my notebook scribbling, all nervousness fallen away. Something about being in a room that’s comfortable and familiar but not mine, near other people but not with them, makes it safe to start writing a new thing.

Why should that be true? I couldn’t tell you. I just keep showing up. And scribbling in my notebook. And tipping like a fool.