Early Sunday Morning

by Edward Hirsch


I used to mock my father and his chums

for getting up early on Sunday morning

and drinking coffee at a local spot,

but now I'm one of those chumps.


No one cares about my old humiliations,

but they go on dragging through my sleep 

like a string of empty tin cans rattling

behind an abandoned car.


It's like this: just when you think

you have forgotten that red-haired girl

who left you stranded in a parking lot

forty years ago, you wake up


early enough to see her disappearing

around the corner of your dream

on someone else's motorcycle,

roaring onto the highway at sunrise.


And so now I'm sitting in a dimly lit

café full of early- morning risers,

where the windows are covered with soot

and the coffee is warm and bitter.


Photo Credit: Sunday Morning, Jill Banks, Oil on canvas.



  Copyright Protected 2005-2012 © Transformation Publications