The Shadow of Le Cafe de Flore

An October evening
Myrtle Avenue
Clinton Hill
Brooklyn
A week after the equinox
Sunset
6:21
The western sky golden__
A chill in the air
The neighborhood
Afoot on the sidewalk
Car traffic dying down
The world passing by
People in a hurry to get
Out of the wind
Not me__
I sit
In the peace of the evening.
A busy street
Not quiet
Just quieter than the bright of the day__
I sit in a collapsible chair
On the sidewalk
Holding hadns with coffee creme
A terrace of my own making
Happy dreaming of Paris
Le Boulevard St. Germain
Et le Cafe de Flore__
1984
Sitting outside en hivre
On a sunny winter's day
In the city
Grim Parisiennes chilled
By the prism of gray on grays
The exhaust
Of the Buses
Of the car
Of the taxis
Peitons bemused by dreams
Of the summer wind from Africa__
Smiles
People
Men hurry to ‘evening designations’
With mistresses
In the small hotels
Bordering the Parc de Luxembourg__
Here
On the terrace
Well-dressed and heeled women

Smoke
Check gold watches
A late lover
They smoke cigarettes
None waiting for me
A man sits with an elegant blonde
She smiles
Kiss on the lips
I smile__
I am sitting alone
And then
Time stands still on the Boulevard
And I drift__
Women
I remember women
Women of my life here
In Paris
Karine
Bernadette
Corrine
Mira
Gabby
Julie
Bridget
Et toutes les femmes
Polaroids in my memories
Other faces without names
Forever in love with the impossibility
Of me with them__
I am alone
But I smile
The waiter serves
Welsh Rarebit
A glass of Bourgogne
I take off my gloves
Hold hands with my wine
Warm in my cashmere
Sitting on the terrace
Watching the Sixth Arrondisement
Head to the cinemas
Les Deux-Magots
Le Drugstore
To evening assignations__
Friends arrive
By accident
Par hazard
We sit together
Not alone
We order a bottle of Bourgogne
Parus home__
Never thinking of the home
Left across the Atlantic
Then
My mother’s Welsh Rarebit
Not like that served by the Cafe le Flore
But I remembered hers and her
The first woman in my life
Some people never forgotten
Some things never forgotten__
Not the Cafe le Flore Paris
The last time there
2015
Mid-morning
St. Padraic’s Day
With
Julie
Candida
Christine
Gabby
And their Beaus
My plane leaving in four hours
Plenty of time
Stories
Not hiding a thing
No secrets laughter and then au revoir
Paris amour le Cafe le Flore
Toujours et forever
Even here on Myrtle Avenue
Not Paris
But 100% here__
Below photo Olivier Brial RIP et moi 1985.

ps with my eyes open I see us all at that table on Rue St. Benoit. No traffic on the Boulevard. Paris' air pollution so bad that the prefecture had closed the city to cars, trucks, and even buses. A quiet had seized the becalm. Occasionally to be disrupted by the Metro's rumble underneath the boulevard. Friends, wine, the Cafe Flore.

Back in the 80s I loved climbing the stairs with a phone jeton in hand to drop the token and dial America. The call lasted about fifteen seconds. Hello good-bye.

I am stronger now. I keep thinking of travel. I feel like Richard Burton, who in the 19th Century sought the source of the Nile with John Spekes. I have been all over the world, but now like Burton trapped as the British Consulate in Trieste at the end of his diplomatic career. Standing on the quai with ships setting sail south on the Adriatic. Wanting nothing more to be asea. Thankfully I have been trapped in New York and Montauk and not Kansas, knowing I will wander again.