March 2021
Bio Note: After my husband Bill Higginson died in 2008, I moved from North Jersey
to the Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and family. I have been writing poems for decades
and am grateful the muse is still finding me. My most recent books are Still-Water Days
(Kelsay Books, in press, 2021), A Prayer the Body Makes (Kelsay Books, 2020). and The
Resonance Around Us (Mountains and Rivers Press, 2013). For more information please visit my website.
Restaurant, This Way
The small town restaurant waits,
its neon sign a signal in the dusk.
Stainless knives, forks, and spoons,
their finish dulled from everyday use,
grace red plastic placements
on the scarred wooden tables
where a waitress lights the candles.
Finished, she walks to the front windows,
to search a darkening sky for the first star;
she has not used up all her wishes yet.
From behind the swinging kitchen doors
the scent of homemade chicken soup eddies
around the old wooden chairs, their backs
and seats curved to fit the human form.
Chairs that remember generations
of family dinners, the weight of booster seats
for babies, and the occasional stranger,
the one just passing through, who,
hungry, and tired of plastic food, is lured
off the highway by a hand-painted sign
with an faded arrow underneath the words:
Restaurant, This Way.
©2021 Penny Harter
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