Coffee House Poets

By: Albert Huffstickler

Photo: Thurston Hopkins

They like to write
where people are.
They like a little noise
with their silence.
They want to look up
and see something. 
They want to be surprised. 
They like the flow
of bodies around them. 
Or perhaps it's just loneliness--
yes, that too. 
But more than that:
they like the atmosphere
a little smoke laden.
They like aromas--
coffee, tobacco, meat frying. 
They like the sudden revelation
as eyes look off
or blur with tears
looking across a table.
Where others court eternity,
they're in love with the moment
in all its tawdriness and glory,
that instant when truth appears
out of nowhere--a truth
as simple and as natural 
as people sitting together
in a room over coffee
in all their vulnerability
and their humanness. 

You can find this poem in Albert Huffstickler’s great book of poems — Why I Write in Coffee Houses and Diners.