There is something about Italians. They have such lovely skin. Us Scandinavians, northern Europeans generally, carry a sallow and heavy look about us, a severity that’s somehow rooted in, what, perhaps a solemnity from ages ago that no amount of yoga can deracinate. That’s a shame really because I live in a sunny environment where, as Anne Morrow Lindbergh says, “…people smile at you here, like children, sure that you will not rebuff them, that you will smile back. And you do, because you know it will involve nothing.” It’s not true though that it involves nothing. A smile means too much to me. I see few smiles, few faces even, throughout my days that a smile usually forces me to redirect my gaze as I’m entirely unused to any facial expressions looking at me.

And when I do encounter a smile, I’m forced to write a poem about it. It is absurdly difficult to write a good poem I’ve found. I’m more of the Billy Collins type, which is to say, rhyming and I should not be compadres. At this point with hip hop, arguably the best poetry that’s ever been written, you might as well leave rhyming to song. Here is my latest attempt at special intensity given to the expression of feelings.

You Know the One

On Bluetooth speakers, Paper Planes by M.I.A. plays. Typers, talkers, baristas brewing and bellowing cortado, macchiato, americano and au lait.

Planes. Both tilted and turned, I evade the hard light of the eastern window.
Name. The barista, you know the one, texts a friend (or lover feasibly) behind the counter.
Day. The one with the pointed ears and lovely tinge of rosacea, accentuating high cheekbones.
Wait. I’ve got a nasty pimple on the side of the nose today. That really won’t do.

Trains. To the west, I eye one of those tasteless gluten free muffins.
Game. Only to avoid the direct gaze from the barista, you know the one.
Fame. The one with the mom jeans, one arm akimbo, tapping keys with a hasty anemic thumb with the other hand.
Name. Like one of those Rembrandt paintings from I don’t when, updated with communication facilities.

Bones. She leaves her lover behind, removes a brimming bus bucket near the northern window, defiantly.
Bombs. I sit, Mary Oliver between my lap and laptop, warning of poetic diction and cliché (and most probably adverbs).
Hit 'em. “I’ve got an oat milk cappuccino to go!” another barista calls out.
System. My command ‘v’ feels full of some copied word or phrase, a confession conceivably.

Us. Or maybe a flight searched, something I was going to do in the South, perhaps a waterfall in Toccoa.
Wireless. A doddery man in strappado pose, near to his final chapter, into the epilogue even, circles on a small black coffee.
Trucks. Black coffee, indicative of psychopathic tendencies. It’s been researched they say.
Gas. A taste for cream and sugar, removed long ago, while waiting on the love of a barista, you know the one.