February rain drives its arrows into the roof
of a coffee house that for now shelters
dozens of people, their coats darkened
and trousers clinging, the damp spears
of their umbrellas dripping on the floor.
They stand, most holding steaming paper cups,
while others juggle beverages, laptops, and cells,
awaiting tables during the afternoon-long storm
under a mashed-flat sky that eventually grays
perceptibly into darkness through fogged windows
as cloaked figures like hunters dash past,
cars stopping, then surging like maddened beasts.
Against this modern-day, animated cave painting,
within this temporary community, a young woman
defensively shrugs her voice as if shoulders
to the man who has just spelled out to her
he wants to rub out their love the way a clerk
scumbles the numbers on the chalkboard
in front of the bar to advertise a special.
Everyone else in the room, man and woman,
old and young, imperceptibly leans in
as if to gather around and warm hands on
the conversation of these now unstrangerly
people as they add their story to the tribe’s.

John Graves Morris, a 1974 graduate of Memorial High School and UW-Eau Clairel, is Professor of English at Cameron University and the author of Noise and Stories (Plain View Press, 2008). He lives in Lawton, Oklahoma.