Yesterday we celebrated
my friend Laine’s 80th birthday
with good cookies and cappuccino
at Da Capo across the street. Our lives
have overlapped for years (she is a wonderful
professional singer and I can’t sing at all.
Besides that we have much in common.
Even ancestry.) We sat at the counter
talked to Amen Adel Hassan
kind and handsome Egyptian man
who works there every day. I am a regular
so we know each other a little. We started
with Egypt and he told us about
what he thinks and why he left and we
moved on to coming to America: Amen
and Laine’s family and mine and I thought
for the thousandth time how little we all
know about one another and how each one of us
every single person on the face of this big earth
has a story, and it’s probably good.
A perfectly wonderful Esther poem: good people, good stories, good food.
Sweet. Sharing this with Bill.