Houses For Memories And Cafes For Remembering Poem by Isabelle Parkes

The second hand’s stalking the fabric of time,
The minutes are busy keeping track of this rhyme,
And all the promises this place holds makes the roof start to cave in.
Now you’re stuck at the end, you don’t know where to begin…

Try that night in the café, alone in a booth,
A smile as pained as a wobbling tooth,
He reads the writing on the bottles and counts the letters in a laugh,
He likes to fiddle with the salt shaker and flirt with the staff,
“Coffee to go, ” and a smoke while you wait,
Maybe the reason to live on a takeaway plate,

He’s just the lesser of two evils, but the one with better scars,
Maybe they’ll look through the clouds enough to see the stars,
That’s his hope of hopes and the dreaming of his night,
Bad to worse, a patch of good, trying as he might –

And then a glance to the street, he watches her, the best of both worlds,
The fabric of time just keeps coming unfurled,
A box of memories under one arm and a warm smile on her face,
The steps she takes, the way she turns, displays the inner grace;
So he stands on his smoke and trips on his words,
Dividing his smile into hesitant thirds,
But that’s the beginning and it goes on from there,
She’s a brilliant listener, just fixes her hair,
And that box hit the floor as she opened her mouth
And her tiniest whisper was incredibly loud.

She said, “This is your wake up call,
It’s really not that bad at all,
I know the answers to the questions that you never though to ask,
And the tears of your soul we can collect up in a flask,
You don’t want to hear it, but I think you should listen,
You’re stuck between this and a mind that is missin’,
There isn’t a single word on these walls,
Your life is in gear but your eagerness stalled.”

He wasn’t suffering insanity, but enjoying every minute,
Simply bearing witness to the people sitting in it,
Maybe that’s why his thought process managed to change
And this woman brought out from him the innermost tame;
He said, “Maybe someday I’ll build you a soul out of blessings,
When you’re learning the hard way, I’ll sit through the lessons,
And I’ll fill up your pockets with beautiful smiles,
And someday we’ll sift through them, just waiting awhile.”

Keeping his word and saving his face,
This man adopted compassion and that innermost grace,
Consisting of one great truth that has stood throughout time;
Man in love cannot lie.

And all the memories they piled and stuck in this house
Leave hardly an inch for the dust or a mouse,
But that was the general aim, to create every proof
That you don’t need bricks to prop up a roof.