In the Coffee Shop

To a bird looking in at us through the window
We must look so stern
Our face-the-day hoods snug and firm, about our whole bodies  

But, when they played the hip hop song,
I noticed that the girl across the table started shaking her head
Her hair bouncing with the beat
And later, through my headphones, when my favorite song was spun,
I started miming the words to myself, placing myself before the sun
With metaphorical fist pumping that I will not go gently into any night
Before telling myself to calm down and carry on, head down 

Such are these wellsprings of desire within us
Which we, with unthinking effort, so nimbly conceal,
Like bodies which we do not wonder if we will dress
Avoiding each other’s eyes, smiling politely if we pass by
Because this is life: a calm face of sea, spinning oceans underneath

If we are all actors on a stage, we spend most of the time
Pushing down and getting by and
Hiding all the desire that drives us
Measuring our lives by coffee cups, sure,
But between the sips, holding a firm grip on the mast within us
As we bounce and bound all through the theater of this world
With all its plastered masks all about us, so placid

To stay balanced on the sea, then— 
This is our great trick, and we are all Houdinis
Striding atop the love and rage and pain which is never very far beneath us
A great endless wave always rising to meet us
As we all seek to walk on water
In all the places where it really matters,
Far from the coffee shops where we silently circle each other,
In the moments we reveal what burns inside us