Winter Sunrise Outside a Café
Near Butte, Montana
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.
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.
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Disclaimer
We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2012 by Joseph Hutchison, whose most recent book of poems is Marked Men, Turning Point Books, 2013. Reprinted from Thread of the Real, Conundrum Press, 2012, by permission of Joseph Hutchison and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.