Winter Sunrise Outside a Café
Winter Sunrise Outside a Café
Near Butte, Montana
by J. Hutchinson
A crazed sizzle of blazing bees
in the word EAT. Beyond it,
thousands of stars have faded
like deserted flowers in the thin
light washing up in the distance,
flooding the snowy mountains
bluff by bluff. Moments later,
the sign blinks, winks dark,
and a white-aproned cook—
surfacing in the murky sheen
of the window—leans awhile
like a cut lily . . . staring out
into the famished blankness
he knows he must go home to.
Very nice. Capturing a moment by evocative natural imagery with a sense of irony, well-contained and expressed in free verse two-lined stanzas. The odd thing about a cafe staying open all night and then closing at dawn centers on the cook painted “like a cut lily” in the window “staring out into the famished blankness he knows he must go home to.” Another great image: “the thin light…flooding the snow mountains bluff by bluff.” This does one of the things poems should do: showing us what was perhaps just a glance of something personal against a vast landscape.