Like a string of empty tin cans rattling behind an abandoned car...

Poetry for this Sunday morning....

    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.