TRANSCENDANCE

 

What I'd really like in my old age

is an allnight diner across the street,

breakfast twentyfour hours, good coffee,

smoking in the back. I don't sleep long

most nights. Years ago, when I knew Keith

the baker across the way, I'd wake and

walk over to the bakery and visit with

him in the wee, small hours, maybe have

a toke or two, listen to some weird

flying saucer, interplanetary, aliens

amongus show on the radio and then

say my good night or morning and wander

back to my place and back to sleep.

It was good. But what I'd really like

now is an allnight diner. I could

climb out of bed at two in the morning,

cross the street and into the light and

smells of early morning, truck drivers,

newspaper workers, cab drivers, (I

worked in a place like this once) and

find my booth in back and sit watching

and maybe writing while I drank my

coffee and smoked, feeling the night

outside, not a harsh night, a benevolent

night, guarded by the city cops at the

counter, a sheriff's deputy or two,

everyone caught somewhere between

sleeping and waking, a good place to

be. We need these places and they're

fading fast, eaten up by the chains,

the massproducers. They're getting

harder and harder to find and I very

seriously doubt that I will find one

across the street from my apartment

before I die. But it's a nice dream.

Sometimes I wake in the night and

stumble to my bedroom chair and my

last night's cold cup of coffee, light

a cigarette and sit there halfasleep

dreaming of just such a place. And

the dream takes on cosmic proportions

and I find myself floating upward

through the ceiling out into the

starcluttered night and I'm walking

along a road that rises up into the

sky and far ahead, its lights out

shining the stars, is my diner, my

cosmic diner, arms outstretched,

just waiting for me.

 

 

Albert Huffstickler