Outside the wide front windows, rain is washing
the field of concrete with sheets of
water, the cars sitting like obedient puppies
as grime falls away from their coats

Outside the windows, laughing people scurry
under any overhang to keep dry and
pull back their children who strain to slap the soles
of their feet -and the soul of
their hearts- against the shining surface of
gathering puddles

Outside the windows, two men sit where they
found refuge for smokers under the
window overhang, a tin can as ashtray balanced
on the bench between them,
the profile of the elder showing him speak as
the younger reaches a hand to touch
the frail man’s shoulder.

Inside the windows, the air has turned the shade
found at the mouth of a cave, shadows
in far corners, growing darker deeper inside the
usually bright bar. At the pool table,
a solitary man walks back and forth, staring only
at the shadow cast by the eight-ball,
not moving his cue in the game he isn’t playing

Facing away from windows, two regulars sit at
the bar, eight seats apart, their backs
a rampart against what they cannot bear to see –
the children desperate to break loose
into the magic of deepening puddles,
                                and afraid even

to glimpse, through those windows, how, when
the younger man puts his hand on
the old man’s shoulder, those shoulders begin
to shake with sobs, elder tears
falling on the ashes of the smoke, forgotten and
burned out, in his hand.

– Judith McKenzie