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At the All-Night Joint
Carl Mayfield
No one wants to know
if my bald spot is painted on.
What I think about anything
wouldn't fill a salt shaker.
After a brief silence
a woman says the cook
is waiting, doesn't have all day.
I'm sure that he does,
but I let the issue slide.
The eggs arrive,
happy to be out
of the kitchen.
And it hits me
that I'm happy too.
And it hits me,
again and again.
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Homage
to Edward Hopper
Carl Mayfield
He
noticed that nothing is to everyone,
including coffee cups, sides of barns,
the air burdened with sunlight.
He saw what we felt
before we knew we were
breasts and wide-brimmed hats.
Some thought he was a painter and he let them.
Many more glanced at his work
while thinking of a sunken-eyed pot roast
beckoning from their dreams,
and he let them.
When you turn your face
back to the minute you've been given,
take pleasure in your solitude,
in the moment you sense
you are being caressed
by a brush that trembles
at the speed of perception.
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Seen, Unseen
Carl Mayfield
The clematis by the bay
adopts a shade of burgundy.
People walk by,
seagulls fly overhead.
Unseen at mid-day,
stars fly a little
above the seabirds
and the haircuts.
My path, too, is invisible
to those who have no use
for a simpleton like me.
The clematis sways in the breeze.
The burgundy follows the flowers
wherever they go.
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