Analysis of At the Diner in Cincinnati, 1975

I eat my lunch with old women
to remind me who I am
under all this plumage

there are six or eight whose
faces occupy the spaces   
in the little booths
but seldom more than four
smile to me when I walk in

they wear hats on their spider-web hair
and gloves on their spotted hands
purses and shopping bags burden them

they come to town to shop for
needles or for stout black shoes
and on holy days the communion rail
at the big church is lined with them,
mouths popped open
like baby birds

each one is a widow,
the half death cast back
into the dimming light and
the shadows of the children
the wedding rings twirl    
where once the flesh was plump

“she is a man’s” was the message
 when the fingers flashed with heat
 and the children stirred
 in each velvet belly
like poppy seeds in the rain

“she was a man’s” the thinning circles say,
 still possessed by something dead
 true to bones in Sunday suits

we drink tea, eat soup,
and I count out the change
for the gray-faced girl
who rattles cups
and drops the spoons

infirm magi, last Christmas
they brought their gifts to me
and among the offerings was
a handkerchief done in red,
silk thread saying “Miami Beach”

I waited for the one
who had handed me the box
to tell me why I held the bit of
cloth with a map and two words
done in stitches like a wound

my son, she said, brought this to me
she named that poppy seed,
the one who went to Florida,
the one who sent her money,
the one who died
and she had a telegram
about a soldier in Korea

I never went to Florida, but
I wept on Miami Beach