Museum Of Poetry Archive

Long time since 1977 but this morn I walked into Hotel California inhabiting my local cafe where the coffee’s alright but the music can be all wrong. Luckily, resident barista, Hannah, is a woman one can reason with, despite her taste in classic hits. Knows how I like my coffee, knows when to change a playlist, which is why this moulting pigeon defaults to such an unpretentious, uncute but underrated cafe. Knowing what pain this regular can be, she exchanged flightless Eagles for Dylan and – free of those rifts – the fog lifts. First song is pure, pre-hippie folk and although it provides no answers at least you are comforted that those questions never did have any. There’s a newspaper that tells you nothing new, nothing that changes your vague plan but with decent coffee, Bob and a merciful waitress you can take off your hat, maybe order toast and accept that you may as well settle because this is the only place you were ever heading. Allan Lake

Twenty years ago, he saw him on a regular basis, sometimes they'd run into each other, out in the street or at the local store, damn near every week at the open reading tall and muscular, bald, white dude, black t-shirt, intense, big close lipped smile open to new ideas, but he was definitely keyed into his own clear perspectives, suddenly he wasn’t there; no words, no message, nothing even passed along last wednesday the feeling comes in, during these apocalyptic-pandemic days ‘who is missing in the tribal circle,’ who has lost touch a connection exists, in his life, roots spread wide then age they break, become brittle and break off when the species is in jeopardy new life blood flows out to recheck, re engage, make sure the connections have life so where he was, is important, if he is important, so the gnawing intuition each time the street is passed, makes sense tracing back the to the last time, there was no conflict, no great plan, no Canada run, r